


traitors never win

by Kats_watermelon



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, bonnie and clyde - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-08 12:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14693814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kats_watermelon/pseuds/Kats_watermelon
Summary: Murphy's been kicked out of his crew. Emori's been alone for a while now. They both have a knack for robbery and dreams bigger than their pasts, and they're willing to steal from anyone and everyone to prove it.





	1. Part 1 - Clyde

 

 _This is how it ends_.

With Murphy on the floor of the motel, his cheek pressed into chlorine-scented carpet, watching the car speed away as the shattered pieces of his heart press into his lungs until he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t –

* * *

_This is how it begins._

* * *

There is a beauty in a new getaway car that is always impossible to find anywhere else. The promise of escape, of freedom, of a damn big payout. Murphy loves the purr of the engine under his feet and the smooth wheel under his hands.

They stole this particular model somewhere in Philadelphia, in between drinks at the bar and planning their next heist. This one is, according to Bellamy and Clarke, the one to end them all. Wells has an in, Raven’s setting up the explosives, Monty and Jasper have properly spiked the wine, and Murphy has a new set of wheels to get them the hell out of Dodge. Then they can all retire to some beach somewhere and Murphy can forget about being a bruised little kid with a knack for stealing.

This is the heist, he thinks. This is the one that will set him free.

 

* * *

 

“Damn,” Murphy says. “Why can’t I go to the party again?”

Wells grins at him in the mirror, adjusting his tie.

“Because you’re the driver,” he replies. “We go to the party and steal the stuff, you make sure we get away before the cops realize anything is missing.”

Murphy sighs dramatically.

“At least this is the one that’ll take those fuckers at Ark down,” he says. “I guess I can miss the party. You guys better bring me some champagne. At least some of those little snack-things that they serve at fancy shit like this.”

“Hors d'oeuvres?” Wells says, amused.

“Yeah, those.”

“Sure, Murphy,” Wells says, flicking the comm in his ear. “Clarke, you copy?”

Murphy sticks his ear right up against Wells’s and sees Wells roll his eyes in the mirror. Clarke’s voice sounds tinny and far away to Murphy when she speaks.

“Yeah, I copy. I’m guessing your roommate is being a pain in the ass?”

“He can hear you.”

Clarke says something decidedly unlady-like and Murphy steps away from Wells, saying, “I’m going to go see if there’s enough gas in the car.” Wells nods, pressing one finger to the comm and frowning. Murphy leaves the hotel room, sticking his hands in his pockets and heading down to the garage. The car they stole isn’t exactly one that flies under the radar like their last one (a beat-up minivan that Murphy complained about the whole time), but it’s fast and Murphy likes the color. It’s sleek and blue and the color reminds him of the SUV that his mom used to pick him up from school in.

He gets in, feeling the steering wheel under his fingers and smiling. He shuts his eyes and thinks about how the wheel will feel after they’ve pulled off this heist. He will be smiling, grinning, Wells in the seat next to him and Bellamy and Clarke and Raven in the back, all of them laughing with the high of a heist. Jasper will be yelling into the comms, most likely in the process of making after-heist moonshine with Monty. Raven will be making snarky comments about Murphy’s driving and he’ll feel happy, like he’s at home -

“Murphy!”

Murphy’s eyes snap open and he looks up at Wells, who’s knocking on the window with a grin.

“Come on,” Wells says. “It’s time to go!”

Murphy unlocks the car and takes the earpiece that Wells hands him, sticking it in his ear. He hears the back doors open as the other three climb in. Raven is dressed as a plumber. She’s the only one of them that has been to the location before, that time under the guise of fixing a plumbing problem (one that she’d created a few days before that visit). This time she’s going to be checking up on her work and detonating the explosives that she put in place. Bellamy and Clarke are dressed for the party. Clarke is wearing that blue dress that Bellamy likes and Bellamy’s tie matches it. Murphy considers making another “Mom and Dad” joke but decides he doesn’t feel like getting smacked. He shuts up and drives out of the hotel garage, his entire body tingling.

_This is the heist._

The plan isn’t unlike the others that they’ve pulled off. Raven will detonate an explosion to distract the party guests, who will be a little more drunk and therefore more compliant than usual from the spiked wine, and Wells, always the concerned citizen, will herd them out of the party carefully. The explosion will knock out security cameras and leave Bellamy and Clarke to steal the files from the offices. Then they’ll all go back to the hideout, get drunk off their asses, and celebrate another successful heist.

Murphy, of course, will have been in the car for all the excitement, so he’s looking forward to the after-heist drunken shenanigans.

“I got both of you invites,” Wells says to Bellamy and Clarke. “This time you’re a French couple that owns another company that’s interested in making a deal with Ark. You just have to schmooze up to some of the executives that will be here. How’s your French accent?”

“Passable,” Clarke says.

“Nonexistent,” Bellamy says.

“Get a new cover story,” Murphy says.

“Okay, we can work with that,” Wells mutters, drumming his fingers on the car door. “Clarke, you explain that Bellamy speaks almost no English, and if anyone tries to speak French to him, just politely tell them their accent is awful and walk away.”

“So I have to be silent?” Bellamy asks.

“Yeah, that’ll be a first for you,” Murphy laughs. He receives a smack on the back of the head from either Bellamy or Clarke and cries, “I’m driving, you assholes!”

“Then learn to shut up,” Bellamy replies.

They all talk and laugh the whole way to the party. Wells steps out of the car first, the valets bowing and scraping at Ark’s prized prince. Murphy drives around the block after Wells gets out and Bellamy and Clarke and Raven all get out in different places around the venue. Murphy parks in his assigned spot by the side door, where he’ll pick up Raven, then Bellamy and Clarke, and finally Wells. He turns off the engine and the lights and lights a cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window. He can hear the sounds of the city all around him - sirens in the far distance, cars rushing between the buildings, high-pitched laughter, a dog barking somewhere, chatter from the party floating from the windows of the building Murphy is parked next to, the quiet babble through the comm in his ear as the others discuss the going-ons of the party. Murphy takes a long drag from the cigarette and thinks that it’s quiet moments like these that make the high-speed chases he sometimes has to pull off worth it.

He’s sitting there for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, when the door behind him in the alley, the one that Wells is supposed to herd the party guests through, is thrown open. Wells runs out and Murphy frowns at his rearview mirror, because Wells isn’t supposed to be out by himself. Where are the party guests?

By the time the cop tackles Wells, it’s too late for Murphy to fix his mistake.

He sits breathless and frozen as they haul Wells off the ground, handcuffs around his wrists. A police cruiser pulls up by the door, seven meters away from Murphy’s back bumper. He tips his mirror and meets Wells’s eyes in it.

Wells has on a sad smile, looking at Murphy through the window of the police cruiser. He knows, Murphy thinks. He knows that Murphy is a coward and isn’t going to save him. Wells knows and he is okay with it.

Murphy is a coward. He watches the police cruiser drive away, Wells’s head barely visible in the backseat. He was running for the car. He was running for the car so that Murphy could get him the hell out. Murphy is a coward. He waits for the police to leave before he starts the car with shaking hands and drives away.

The night no longer feels full of possibilities and hope, but shattered and silent. Murphy can only hear the dull roar in his ears as he drives back to the hideout. Questions run through his mind - how he can fix it, how he can explain to the others that it wasn’t his fault, how he can just run as far as possible as fast as possible. What is he going to say? What explanation does he have for doing nothing?

The lights are already on in the apartment when he pulls up. He flinches and gets out of the car, adrenaline beginning to pump through his veins. He fumbles the keys when he reaches the door and has to bend over to pick them up. When he stands up again, the door is open and a livid Bellamy is standing in front of Murphy. Murphy swallows.

“Hey, Bellamy,” he says.

Before Murphy even has a chance to flinch, Bellamy has him in a chokehold and is dragging him into the apartment. Murphy chokes, his fingers scrabbling hopelessly at Bellamy’s arms. Bellamy has always been stronger than him.

“What the fuck did you do?” Bellamy growls. He shakes Murphy and Murphy sees black spots. “What the _fuck_ did you do?”

“Let him go, Bellamy,” Clarke snaps. “There will be time to kill him after we get our answers.”

Bellamy releases Murphy and Murphy collapses to the floor, coughing and clutching his throat and thanking God that he can breathe.

“You son of a bitch!” Raven screams. Jasper is hanging onto her arm, begging her to sit down, but Raven is determined to get to Murphy next. “How could you?”

“I didn’t,” Murphy wheezes.

“You’re a liar,” Clarke says, her voice cold in the way it is when she’s trying not to cry. “They had insider knowledge about Wells. Stuff only one of us would know. None of the rest of us had any reason to turn Wells in.”

“You really think I did this?” Murphy demands, glaring up at Clarke. “What reason do I have for this shit?”

“You’ve always hated Wells,” Raven spits. “You’ve always hated Wells and Clarke and all of us and it’s no fucking surprise that you’d turn traitor like this.”

“I swear I didn’t do this,” Murphy says. He’s still on the ground and looks up at Bellamy, pleading. “You have to believe me, I didn’t do this.”

Bellamy’s eyes are cold. He looks away from Murphy, at Clarke, and Murphy knows that his sentence has been passed. He stumbles to his feet and makes a break for the door. He gets about a half a meter (go him) before Bellamy’s arm is around his neck and he can’t breathe and this is it, this is how he’s going to die, without even getting to apologize to Wells for doing nothing -

“He’s not worth it,” Bellamy says, dropping Murphy. Murphy blinks away the dark spots in his vision and the tears in his eyes and gasps for just a tiny bit of oxygen in his lungs. “Get the hell out of here, you coward. Get the hell out or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

The coward in Murphy says to run, so he does. He gets in the new getaway car that still has a hint of Wells’s fancy cologne from the party lingering in it and slams on the gas until he’s left Philadelphia far behind. He keeps driving and driving and driving, stopping only to refill the tank. It’s one of the worst nights that Murphy’s had in a long time. He can’t figure out just where everything went wrong, when he made a mistake, what he did to ruin everything. He just drives numbly, trying to reason with an uncaring God and hating himself all the while.

He’s somewhere in the Southwestern desert when he spends the last of his cash. He’s still in the desert when he runs out of gas.

He finished crying the night before and now all he can do is sit there and stare through the windshield, completely numb. All he can hear is Bellamy saying, “I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

“Out of the car!”

Murphy glances to his right to see a girl standing on the side of the road, a gun pointed at his window. He almost laughs. He looks behind the car at the endless stretch of empty road and wonders how long it would take for the police to find his body. How long would it take for the crew to realize what had happened to him? Would they even care?

“I said get out of the car!”

“Go ahead and shoot!” Murphy calls, rolling down the window. “I don’t have anything valuable in here!”

The girl walks over to the car, keeping the gun pointed at Murphy. Murphy’s had enough guns pointed at him during his career in crime that this does not bother him. She peers inside, at the spotless seats in the back and the empty floor of the front.

“Open the glove box,” she demands. Murphy does, showing her the first-aid kit that Clarke insisted that they keep in the car. All other evidence of the car’s previous owners has been erased. The girl tells Murphy to show her the contents of the first-aid kit to prove that there’s nothing in it.

“I told you,” Murphy says. “Nothing valuable. And I spent the last of my cash on gas.”

She lowers the gun and just looks at him. He takes the opportunity to look at her. She has a bandanna pulled up over the lower half of her face and a baseball cap. Freckles dot her cheeks and he realizes that in the deep brown of her eyes, there are golden flecks.

“What are you doing out here by yourself with no money and no gas?” the girl asks. Murphy shrugs.

“Running. What are you doing out here by yourself with a gun?”

“Surviving.”

Murphy lets his head thump against the headrest of the front seat.

“Surviving,” he repeats. He looks over at her again. “You gonna shoot me?”

She raises one eyebrow.

“Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know,” Murphy says honestly. The girl pokes her head through the open window, pulling down the bandanna, and studies him. Normally, Murphy hates being looked at, but in that moment, a gun close enough to kill and a girl stealing the nothing he has left and all his friends thinking he is a traitor, he doesn’t care.

“Do you want to know a secret?” the girl says. Murphy looks at her and she grins, a wolfish grin that is both dangerous and beautiful. “This road doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting.” She leans in conspiratorially. “The real fun is north.”

“What’s north?”

“I told you already,” she says. “Real fun.”

Murphy considers it for an insane second. Fuck off into the desert with a random girl that two minutes ago was robbing him? Not the weirdest thing to happen to him.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”

He gets out of the car, leaving behind the smell of Wells’s cologne and the memories of the last heist, and follows the girl away from the road. They trek for a while before they come to a crumbling old building, one so decrepit Murphy isn’t sure he can even call it a building. The girl doesn’t go into it (Murphy is glad he doesn’t have to follow her into it) but instead around it to what looks like a storm cellar.

“A storm cellar in the desert?” Murphy asks, amused. The girl just grins and swings open the doors.

“It’s not nearly as hot in there,” she tells him. The heat is beginning to get to Murphy, so he walks down the stairs into the basement. The girl follows, pulling the doors shut. She walks past Murphy, who’s squinting into the darkened room, trying to figure out where the hell he is, and flips on a light. Murphy blinks at the sudden light and looks around the room.

“Welcome to whatever the fuck this place is,” the girl says. “Make yourself comfortable.”

From what Murphy can tell, the basement was made to be lived in for extended periods of time. There is a kitchenette in the corner with little more than a stove and a small refrigerator. A rickety-looking table with two chairs around it sits by the stove. There is a door that Murphy guesses leads to the bathroom next to that. The rest of the space is dedicated to a coffee table, a sagging blue couch, two armchairs, and, pushed up against the wall, a full-sized mattress covered in blankets.

“Here,” the girl says, handing Murphy a bottle of whiskey. “I stole it last week, it’s not bad.”

The alcohol is sweet and smooth on his tongue and he drinks more of it before the girl can say anything else. She smiles at his eagerness for the taste. He is too thirsty to ask if there was something she wants from him in return. He needs the release of a good bottle of whiskey, something to make him forget that he has to run. He has to run before he gets connected to the crew’s crimes and a manhunt begins.

“What’s your name?” the girl asks. Murphy hands her the bottle and she takes a long drink.

“John Murphy,” he says. “Most people just call me Murphy.”

“John,” the girl says, rolling the name around in her mouth. She smiles and Murphy’s heart skips a beat. “I’m Emori.”

“Emori. That’s pretty.”

She grins again, that wolfish smile.

“So how long have you been living down here?” Murphy asks, taking another drink of whiskey and casting his eyes around the room.

“My brother and I found this place four years ago,” Emori says. “It’s an old nuclear shelter. Whoever used to live up in that old house was clearly paranoid.”

“Where’s your brother now?”

Emori lowers her eyes to the floor.

“He died.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

She says nothing, just takes the bottle from him and drinks.

“So, John,” she finally says, and he wonders if it’s the whiskey that makes him love the way his name sounds on her lips. “If you have nothing, what were you doing with that lovely car?”

“It was fast,” Murphy said. “Fast and surprisingly easy to steal. Fast means a faster getaway.”

“So you’re a getaway driver,” she says.

“That’s right,” Murphy says. “Until they turned on me.”

“Who?”

“My crew. We used to pull enormous heists. Now they think I’m a traitor.”

“Are you?”

“No. They threw me out for something that wasn’t my fault.”

“Why did they throw you out?”

She has a lot of questions, though Murphy supposes that’s his fault for being vague every time he answers them.

“They threw me out because our beloved prince was arrested. The cops got him. They blame me. They blame me because I was there when they got Wells. I was there.”

“What happened?” she asks.

“I was waiting for the crew outside, thinking everything was fine, but it turns out the cops caught on. Wells came running out at me. He was trying to get away and I hadn’t realized. That’s when they got him.”

“How long ago was that?” she asks quietly, something new and unidentifiable in her voice. Murphy tips his head back, staring at the pockmarked ceiling.

“Two days ago? Three? I’m not sure.”

She hums and drinks from the bottle, passing it back to him. He takes a long drink and shuts his eyes. Bellamy and Clarke will never find him here. They scare him more than the police, more than the Ark security thugs, almost as much as the shadows that dance through his mind when he falls asleep. But they’ll never find him here. He’s safe with Emori.

“So what’s your deal?” he asks, cracking one eye open and peering at her. She shrugs.

“I rob people on the road. Steal food, money. Every once in a while I’ll venture into the closest town and rob the convenience store there.”

“We’re a couple of thieves,” Murphy says, almost laughing. “I ran away from thieves and right into another one.” He drains the last of the whiskey in the bottle. “Do you care if I stay?”

“I could use a partner,” Emori says, grabbing the empty bottle from him. “Stealing is harder when you’re alone.”

“So you won’t kick me out?” His voice comes out more bitter than he means and he quickly softens, but Emori doesn’t seem to mind.

“No, I won’t,” she says, sticking her right hand out at him. Murphy realizes that he hasn’t had a good look at her left hand the whole time, but says nothing, taking her hand. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

 

* * *

 

They make a pretty good team. Murphy lays in the road, usually smeared in whatever red liquid they can find, and when someone exits their car to help him, Emori creeps out of the wilds of the desert and knocks them out. Then they steal everything they can from the car.

“My brother and I used to leave them conscious,” Emori tells him after their fifth robbery. They’re siphoning the gas to put in the getaway car Murphy had arrived in. “But that usually led to more negative results.”

“Like what?” Murphy asks, but instantly regrets it when Emori’s eyes harden. She shifts and pulls up the leg of her jeans to show him a fresh round scar on her calf. He swallows and doesn’t ask any more questions.

After two weeks, they’ve stolen enough money that Murphy suggests moving on. He brings it up casually, when they’re eating breakfast.

“I know that this is a good hiding place,” he says to start off. Emori pauses in eating her apple, her gaze snapping to him. “But I think we can do better.”

“You think that, do you?” she says sharply. Murphy puts up his hands in a placating gesture.

“This works,” he says. “It works really well, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve been gassing up the car for a reason. Eventually, somebody’s going to find this place. We’ll have to be long gone by then. You said that there’s a town nearby, right?”

“There is.”

“We start there. Rob our way all along the west. I worked with professional thieves. I know how to do it and I know how to not get caught.”

She tips her head, studying him.

“Why do you want to do this?” she asks.

_Because all they think I’m good for is driving and I want to prove them wrong. Because nobody out there ever gave a damn about me and it’s about time they did. Because I don’t want to be alone._

“Because it’s what I’m good at,” he replies.

They pack up everything and leave that afternoon. Emori takes the blankets from the bed and Murphy picks up the ones he’s been sleeping on the couch with. They put the food they have in the cooler they stole from a kind woman that had a gun in her belt and pack up the shitty whiskey they stole from a man who probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. Emori counts the bullets that she has and loads the gun she stole before Murphy met her, tucking it in her boot. The rest of the bullets go in a plastic bag in her pocket. When they’re finally ready to go, Emori stops at the bottom of the stairs, looking around the room. Murphy lets her say goodbye and heads up the stairs to where they parked the car. He clears off the desert weeds they were using to cover it up and puts the backseat down. Until they get a motel, they’ll need to sleep in the back. He remembers one night when he and Wells and Raven had been stuck behind a police barricade and had to camp out in the back of the SUV that they had been using as a getaway car at the time.

He jerks himself out of the memory as guilt comes crashing in again and sets the cooler and bag of blankets and clothes in the back. Emori emerges from the cellar and he pretends not to notice the streaks from tears on her cheeks. She climbs into the passenger seat and he puts the car in gear, pulling away from the decrepit old house. They’re on the highway within a minute and Emori grabs her map, tracing a finger along the roads spiderwebbing over the endless expanse of desert.

“It’s about ten minutes west,” she says. Murphy notes the awkward way she holds the map in her ever-gloved left hand but says nothing. He’s never seen her take off the glove, but he’s not one to ask other people about their battle scars.

Heaven knows he doesn’t want people asking about his.

They reach the town in eight minutes and Murphy immediately scans it for motels, grocery stores, possible targets, and anything else they might need. He spots a parking lot up ahead and makes a mental note of its location. They’ll need it later. He picks a convenience store at random and pulls up in front. There’s no need to steal from this one - they have enough money.

“What are we getting here?” Emori asks. Murphy shrugs.

“Whatever the hell we want.”

They buy granola bars and chocolate and Murphy thinks about putting on a hat or something, but he’s never been dumb enough to let any cameras catch his face while on a heist. There’s nothing suspicious about a couple of young adults buying granola bars and chocolate at a convenience store in the New Mexico desert. Besides, the last place his crew was seen was Philadelphia. He’s a thousand miles away from them.

The sun is setting, so Murphy suggest they find a motel. They flip a coin to pick and pay for one night in cash. The woman at the front desk looks them up and down.

“Single or double?” she asks, clearly bored.

“Single,” Murphy says. He’ll sleep on the floor if Emori is uncomfortable, but it’s less suspicious if they seem like they’re a couple. Fewer questions.

“I need to see ID,” the woman says. Murphy pulls out the simple brown wallet that he’s had since he was a kid in Maine, picking a fake ID from the hidden pocket in the lining. He hands it to the woman and she barely glances at it before handing it back with a room key.

“Enjoy your stay,” she says. Murphy and Emori find the room and let themselves in, setting their few bags down and looking around. There is one big bed, a desk with a wicker chair, a dresser with a TV on it, and a tiny bathroom. Emori doesn’t look at the bed or Murphy and murmurs that she’s going to take a shower. She disappears into the bathroom and he sits down at the desk, dumping out the tiny bag of supplies that Clarke used to insist every member of the crew carry with them. He usually kept it tucked carefully in his jacket. Now he sorts through the contents - the brown wallet with the fake IDs that Monty and Raven carefully forged, a small lock-picking kit, a few wrenches and other tools, and a list of fake names that every member of the crew would use, along with the corresponding member that used the name. He sets the list aside, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and sorts the fake IDs. He has twelve, and not a single one has his real name on it. Clarke always said it was too risky to have his real name, and if they were ever caught, the police would only find fake names.

He grabs the little notepad and pen out of the desk drawer and begins to scribble a to-do list as the shower begins to run behind him. They need to steal license plates, they need to get hats and bandanas and oversized jackets, they need to discuss cover stories, they need to make a plan of theft -

“What are you writing?” Emori asks from behind him. Murphy almost jumps at the sudden sound of her voice, but it’s gentle enough to not be too startling. He turns to see her standing there wrapped in a towel, wringing her hair out. Her left hand is ungloved, revealing twisted, misshapen fingers and a skinny wrist that seems too small for the too-large hand attached to it. Murphy looks at it for a half second before looking at her, noting the way her hair hangs around her face when it’s wet.

“A to-do list,” he replies. “Clarke always used to write them before heists, so that we were all clear on the plan.”

Emori sits down on the edge of the bed and begins to braid her wet hair.

“Tell me about your old crew,” she says softly. “You never talk about them.”

“There’s not much to say,” Murphy says, but Emori gives him a look that says that she doesn’t believe him. He sighs and tips his head back, looking at the ceiling.

“There were seven of us,” he starts. “The lucky seven, you could say. Clarke and Bellamy and Wells were the leaders, I guess. Clarke was the bossy one that made all of the plans and Bellamy was the inspirational one that made everyone rally together and Wells--”

“He’s the one that got arrested,” Emori says quietly. Murphy shuts his eyes.

“Raven and Monty were tech geniuses, they made all of our forged documents and any sort of gadget that we might need. Jasper was their apprentice; he and Monty liked to make moonshine for after a successful heist. They could cook up just about anything, I swear. And I was just the getaway driver.”

“Just?”

“Just,” Murphy repeats. He doesn’t want to probe any further into his past and says, “We don’t need to do the first thing on the to-do list until after the sun goes down. Want to watch a film or something?”

If Emori notices that he’s avoiding the subject, she doesn’t bring it up. They flop on the bed and switch on the old TV. The first thing that comes on is a news channel.

“Wells Jaha, after only two and a half weeks, has been sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison tonight. Federal police suspect that he was working with as many as twelve other co-conspirators in the repeated robberies of Ark Industries.”

Murphy switches channels quickly, his eyes burning. Emori says nothing at first, but her hand finds his and he inhales sharply when her fingers wrap around his palm.

“I’m sorry,” she says. He lets himself enjoy the feeling of her hand in his for a half a second before he pulls it out and stands up, pushing aside the curtain over the window to check if it’s dark out yet.

“For what?” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.

“For not shooting you,” she says jokingly, and a surprised laugh bursts from Murphy’s mouth. He turns back to Emori to see her smiling, not the wolfish smile that she had the first day they met, but a gentle smile with sad eyes. He swallows, his gaze dropping away as a heaviness settles in his chest. The TV is playing some old sitcom from the nineties, so he sits on the bed again and watches it with her until nightfall. Once the sun has gone down and the small town is quiet, Murphy and Emori slip out of the motel room and set off walking with an empty bag and a few of the tools that Murphy had.

“Where are we going?” Emori asks after a minute.

“To steal some license plates,” Murphy replies. “Back when I was still a part of the crew, we would have to be careful about the cars I drove, especially if we used the same car for multiple heists. If we did, we would put different license plates on it each time. It made it harder for the police to track. Raven and Monty used to just forge them with scrap metal and some paint, but before they got good at that, we would just steal them.”

“Smart,” Emori says. Murphy grins.

The parking lot he had taken note of earlier is behind the nicer hotel in town, so there are plenty of license plates from different states. He and Emori take their pick, unbolting them from the cars and putting them in the bag they’ve brought. Murphy finds a particularly amusing one from Washington State that reads, “SAX-420.” He shows it to Emori and she snickers and hands him the wrench.

“I bet ‘SEX-420’ was taken already,” she says, watching as he unbolts the plate.

“That or the owner of this lovely car is a pot-smoking saxophonist,” Murphy replies with a grin, the license plate falling into his lap. Emori covers her mouth with her hand to contain her laughter.

They leave the parking lot after relieving six cars of their license plates. They can always steal new ones in another town or another state. They slip quietly back into the motel, past the sleeping man at the front desk and the sound of creaking bedsprings in the room next door, and dump out their loot on the bed.

“This is good,” Murphy says, looking over the plates with a critical eye. “These should last us for a while.”

“Good,” Emori says, picking them up and putting them at the bottom of one of the bags. “That means we can go to sleep now.”

Murphy’s face must betray his surprise, because Emori’s eyebrows raise and she jerks her head towards the wall that creaking bedsprings can be heard through.

“Unless you want to do what they’re doing?”

Murphy’s entire face flushes red and he mutters, “No, I’ll take the floor.”

“You don’t have to take the floor,” Emori says. “I’ll share.”

Murphy’s face turns an even deeper shade of red, but he turns his back as she strips down and puts on a tank top and sleep shorts. He throws on a pair of flannel pajama pants that they stole from a lost tourist and climbs into bed, sticking carefully to one side. Emori curls up on the other side after flipping off the lights.

“Why would you be so surprised about going to sleep?” she asks after a minute.

“We never used to sleep before a heist,” Murphy says softly, staring at the wall. “I guess it’s just a habit.”

“Who are we robbing tomorrow?” Emori laughs. “I thought we were just traveling.”

“We can travel and steal at the same time,” he says through a smile. “It’s multitasking. I was thinking we go a few towns over and hit a grocery store. Small towns usually have less security than bigger cities.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She shifts a little. “Goodnight, John.”

“Goodnight.”

 

* * *

 

They get up early in the morning and turn in their room keys before getting in the car to head for the next few towns. As they’re climbing in, they overhear someone say, “Yeah, six cars got their license plates stolen last night. Crazy, right?” Emori suppresses a giggle with her hand and Murphy grins at her. Soon enough, they’re speeding along the highway through the desert, Emori’s feet up on the dashboard. Ten minutes in, Emori turns on the radio and sings along to the shitty pop song that comes on. Murphy’s face lights up in the first true smile he’s worn in two weeks.

It feels right, somehow.

They stop in a little town on the New Mexico-Arizona border to check off the next item on Murphy’s to-do list. They pick a little thrift shop and find a few different hats and oversized jackets. Murphy picks out a pair of sensible sunglasses and Emori finds a round pair with reflective lenses. She puts them on and grins at him.

“Do I look like a hippie from the sixties?” she asks. Murphy laughs.

“Yeah, you do.”

They buy the clothes and leave, heading for a small town across the border. There is a grocery store there that Murphy bets will be easy to steal from. They park behind the building and Murphy gives Emori his jacket to wear. It’s huge on her and hangs off her small frame. She puts on the round sunglasses and a baseball cap, then ties a bandana around the lower half of her face. Murphy imitates her look with a hat of his own, his sunglasses, and a bandana. He forgoes the jacket - it’s too hot and he doesn’t care if eyewitnesses can describe his body; he has a generic young adult male body anyways.

Besides, Emori looks so small in his jacket and that is rather distracting.

She takes the gun out of her boot and puts it in the waistband of her jeans. Murphy is in charge of the bag that the cashiers will fill. They leave the car and head for the front doors of the store. When they step inside, Murphy looks at Emori and for a second, he thinks he sees fear flash behind her sunglasses, but the moment passes and she pulls out the gun, pointing it at the ceiling. She fires once and screams echo through the store.

“Everybody on the ground!” she shouts. The shoppers quickly oblige and Murphy takes the bag to the first cashier. “Money in the bag, open it up!”

The first cashier is a middle-aged man who looks about ready to faint, but he punches in a code and empties the cash drawer into Murphy’s bag. The next cashier is clearly the manager and glares at Murphy the whole time she is dropping money into his bag. Emori stays by his side, watching the people in the store. The third cashier is young, seventeen at the oldest. She’s shaking and crying and cowering as they approach. Murphy sets his bag on the counter.

“Hey, B?” he calls casually. “Back up a little.”

Emori understands and moves back towards the door. Murphy pulls his bandana down around his neck and smiles at the young cashier.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” he says gently. “What’s your name?”

“Charlotte,” she says through her tears.

“Charlotte,” he says. She sobs, flinching away from him. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Just open up the cash drawer and put the money in the bag. I promise we won’t hurt you.”

She nods and opens the drawer. Her hands shake as she drops the money in Murphy’s bag. He pulls the bandana up over his face again and says, “Thanks, kid.” He zips up the bag and calls to Emori, “Let’s go!”

They run out the back of the store, to where the car is parked outside the loading dock for the produce section. As they get in the car and speed away, sirens start. When they’re past the city limits and back in the endless expanse of desert, sure that the cops aren’t following, they pull off their hats and bandanas. Emori is laughing, probably from the adrenaline rush. Murphy can’t hold in his grin. There’s something thrilling about a good robbery, he thinks. Especially when nobody gets hurt.

Emori counts out the cash from the grocery store and laughs, “Otan and I never got this much stealing from people on the road.”

It’s the first time she’s ever said her brother’s name, so Murphy chooses not to react. He just grins and says, “I told you this was a good idea.”

They decide that it will be risky to check into another motel and instead pull off the highway and drive into the desert. Emori attaches a tarp to the back of the car to cover up the tire tracks. They pick a spot that’s far enough away from the highway and lay out a blanket on the desert sand. It’s well into summer, so the sunset comes late, as they’re laughing and drinking some of the bad whiskey they brought as a celebration of their first real robbery.

“It’s not the same as a good heist,” Murphy says, “but it’s still satisfying as hell.”

“It’s much more satisfying then robbing lost tourists on the highway,” Emori grins, tapping her bottle against his. They drink at the same time, leaning against each other and watching the sunset. Emori lays down and sets her head on Murphy’s leg. He absentmindedly runs his fingers through her hair and wonders when she became so comfortable with him.

“Tell me more about your old crew,” she murmurs, her eyes fixed on the setting sun.

“Like what?” Murphy asks.

“How did you all meet?”

Murphy sighs.

“That’s not a happy story.”

“Few thieves like us have happy backstories, John.”

“Good point.” He sighs again and starts braiding a few strands of her hair. “I grew up in a small town in Maine called Arkadia. There was this company, Ark Industries, that started in that town. They developed new technologies all the time - medical technologies, weapons, transportation, really anything. My dad worked there, as did half the damn town. He was a janitor. My mom worked there too as a receptionist. When I was little, I was happy. My parents loved each other and they loved me.” He inhales shakily. “Then, when I was about eight, I got sick. Really sick. The flu, maybe. My dad went to his bosses at Ark and begged them to help us. We couldn’t afford to take me to the hospital, to any sort of doctor. Ark would have the medicine. My dad hoped that they would help him, you know, since he’d been a loyal employee for years. They refused.” He begins to braid another section of Emori’s hair. “So my dad tried to steal it for me. They shot him down like a dog and called it a warning to all Ark employees that Ark Industries didn’t tolerate what they called treason.”

“God,” Emori whispers. Murphy laughs bitterly.

“There’s no God in this story,” he says. “After my dad died, my mom quit her job and started drinking pretty heavily. She used to take out all her anger on me. She got pretty good at swinging a belt. She wasn’t working, so I started getting good at stealing to feed myself. She died when I was twelve. Drank herself to sleep and never woke up. After that, I was on the streets, stealing to survive. When I was in high school, I met Raven and Monty and Jasper and Bellamy. They’d all been screwed over by Ark somehow. They wanted to take them down. They had to prove that Ark was corrupt. About a week after I turned eighteen, Clarke and Wells joined us. Their parents were high-ranking members of Ark’s board of directors. They’d seen first-hand the corruption and they knew it went all the way up to the top. That’s when we started working on our heists. We made a great team. I was good at stealing cars - I used to do it to break them down and sell off their parts - so I became the getaway driver. The rest is history.”

Emori is silent. Murphy begins braiding a third section of her hair.

“Otan and I have been alone for as long as I can remember,” she says softly. Murphy’s fingers in her hair still and he looks down at her. She isn’t looking at him, the sunset reflected in her eyes. He goes back to twisting her hair into a braid and she inhales shakily. “He was twelve when I was born. He always took care of me. We bounced between foster homes until I was six. He was eighteen and got custody of me. We were barely scraping by, barely making any money. He borrowed some from some dangerous people, but we had no way to pay them back. He was in debt and we were in danger. About four years ago, we fled town. We found the shelter and started robbing people on the road. Our first robbery was a failure, the man pulled a shotgun and we had to run, but we got good at it after that. It worked for a long time. Nobody ever found us. Then, almost two months ago, we stopped a man that had a gun. I - I didn’t realize that he had a gun, I was still hiding in the ditch, but Otan screamed for me to run. That was right before the man shot him dead. I barely escaped. He shot at me and got me in the leg. I had to patch myself up, but it got infected. I stole antibiotics and I did my best. I was just about starving when you ran out of gas in front of my usual spot.”

“Lucky you,” Murphy says softly. He begins to twist the three braids together into one. “So that’s where the scar on your leg is from?”

“Yep,” she says. “What about you? Have you got any battle scars?”

“Plenty,” Murphy replies. “I’ve got one on my shoulder, from the time my mom threw a bottle at me.”

“I bet mine are uglier.”

Murphy can’t help but laugh at that and Emori sits up, stealing his bottle and taking a long drink. She grins at him and lifts up the hem of her shirt, revealing a jagged, pale scar that stands out starkly against her tanned stomach.

“That’s from one of the men Otan owed money to,” she says. Murphy lifts up his shirt to show her a similar scar.

“A pissed-off Ark security officer,” he says. “One that had a knife.”

Emori tips her head to the side to show off another jagged scar behind her ear.

“One of my foster fathers,” she says. “He called me a little freak. Slammed my head against the stairs.”

Murphy tips his head up to show her the neat scar under his chin.

“I almost got my throat slit by a few Ark thugs that caught me stealing from them.”

Emori reaches up and runs her fingers over the scar. Murphy inhales sharply and catches her wrist.

“Don’t,” he whispers brokenly. She just stares at him. He swallows, unable to look away from the gold flecks in her eyes. “I hate people touching them.”

“John.”

He lets go of her wrist and she sets her hand on his face, her fingers gently tracing his cheekbones. She lifts her left hand and sets it on his other cheek, her fingertips mapping out roads and highways on his face. He shuts his eyes.

“John,” she says softly. “Look at me.”

He opens his eyes and hates that there are tears in them. Emori’s thumb pushes away one that has slipped out of his eye.

“They don’t define you,” she says. “They don’t. They are a part of you but they don’t define you.”

Murphy’s eyes drop to her lips. He reaches up and cups her face with his hands, pulling her close and pressing his lips to hers. She pulls herself against him, her hands sliding into his hair. Their kisses go slowly from soft and sweet to something more passionate. Emori pulls back just long enough to yank her shirt over her head. Murphy pulls his own shirt off and pulls her down on top of him, kissing her again. The desert rocks dig into his back through the blanket they’re laying on, but they’re not digging into her back, so Murphy doesn’t really care.

They wake up tangled together in the backseat of the car and Murphy thinks that this is all he’s ever needed.

 

* * *

 

After Arizona, they travel to Nevada. They rob another grocery store, then steal and buy a few disguises and sneak into a casino. Murphy steals loaded dice from a guy that was probably a mobster and manages to swindle a good three thousand dollars from another guy that was also probably a mobster. He and Emori get chased out of the casino by the probably-a-mobster’s friends and spend the night in a motel, laughing and counting out their winnings.

“We make a pretty good team,” Murphy says, and Emori grins against his lips.

They spend almost a month in Nevada, robbing a few grocery stores, and then a small bank. Murphy teaches Emori his old tricks, like how to craft a cover story, how to hide in plain sight, and other heist tricks. She, in turn, shows him the best way to snap someone’s wrist if they grab his arm and the places in people’s cars that they most often hide their valuables.

After Nevada, they move on to Utah but don’t stay long, only two weeks. However, by the end of those two weeks, they’ve gained a sort of notoriety. They see themselves on the news at the motels they stay in. The pictures are always blurry, clearly from grocery store security cameras, and show Emori in Murphy’s oversized jacket, pointing a gun while Murphy stuffs his bag full of money. With the blurry quality of the photos and the bandanas and reflective sunglasses, they almost don’t look human.

“We’re on every local news station in the West,” Emori says on their last night in Utah. They’re near the Utah-Colorado border and plan to cross over in the morning and find a good bank to rob. She flops down on the bed next to Murphy, switching on the TV. A local news station is the first one to come on, showing one of the blurry security camera photos from the bank in Nevada they robbed. That one was tough, but they managed to get away with a lot of money. Emori switches the station to cable news, which they are also on. The reporter is interviewing a nervous young woman.

“Hey, I know her!” Murphy says. “That’s the girl from the first grocery store. What’s her name…” He snaps his fingers. “Charlotte! That’s it, that’s Charlotte!”

Emori unmutes the TV. The reporter is asking Charlotte, “What were they like, that first robbery?”

Charlotte glances nervously at the camera.

“They just came in and the girl had a gun. The boy had a bag and he took it to each of the cashiers and told us to put all the money in the register in the bag. When he got to me, he told the girl to back up a little. I was terrified, crying, and he said, ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’ He asked me what my name was. It was strange, he was almost nice. When I started crying again, he said, ‘It’s okay. I promise we’re not going to hurt you.’ I gave him the money and then they ran out.”

“Thank you, Charlotte. These two robbers have terrorized grocery stores all across the West in the last two months. The last confirmed sighting of them was in a small town ten miles out of Salt Lake City, but many people have called in, reporting sightings of them as far from that as Washington State. The FBI has set up a tip line to call if you see anything that could help them apprehend these two.”

Emori turns off the TV and settles into Murphy’s side.

“The FBI,” she says. “We’ve caught their attention.”

“And they still don’t know what we look like,” Murphy grins. “Soon we’ll have enough money to retire to some beach in California.”

“Mmm, California,” Emori hums, her fingers skipping along his sides. “I like the sound of that. Warm sands, sun, nobody trying to kill you.”

“Exactly,” Murphy says, and she kisses the underside of his jaw. “Or we could go a little while longer and move to Spain. I hear the Mediterranean is beautiful all year round.”

“That would be even better,” Emori says, kissing the dip in his shoulder. “Spain. We could take weekend drives to Portugal or France.”

“I’ll need to brush up on my Portuguese,” Murphy laughs, and Emori pushes him down on the bed, crawling on top of him and kissing the breath from his lungs.

They leave Utah in the morning and head into Colorado. They check into a motel thirty miles from the border under fake names and spend the early afternoon planning their trip through the state. They decide to take a winding path that goes back and forth across the state to throw off any authorities trying to track them. It will be easier to avoid them if they can’t predict the path Murphy and Emori are taking.

They spend almost two months in Colorado. It’s full of small towns and 24-hour grocery stores that are easy to steal from. Half of the employees are high off their asses, making stealing from them that much easier.

“Thank God for legal marijuana,” Murphy mutters, counting out and sorting the money they’ve taken from a grocery store staffed almost entirely by young adults that were too confused and disoriented to resist at all. Emori snorts, patching up a tear in Murphy’s jacket.

“It’s almost boring,” she says. “They just stand there and stare at you.”

“What, you’d rather they try to tackle you?” Murphy asks, putting a rubber band around the stack of ones he’s been counting out. Emori rolls her shoulder, no doubt remembering the overzealous cashier that tried to tackle her to the ground. She slammed her shoulder against a counter and Murphy knocked out the cashier. The rest of the robbery was conducted with more anger than usual.

“Should we head for Wyoming next?” Emori asks. “I’ve heard that Yellowstone is beautiful. I want to see it at least once.”

“No,” Murphy says. “We should go back to New Mexico for a few weeks. Let things cool off, maybe go to the shelter. We don’t want to get careless. Careless gets caught.”

“You’re right,” Emori sighs. She snaps the thread and holds up his jacket. “All patched up!”

“You’re the best,” Murphy grins. She leans over and presses a chaste kiss to his lips.

“I know.”

So they head back to New Mexico, taking turns driving so that they can keep traveling through the nights. It’s a bit of a long journey from northern Colorado to slightly-southern New Mexico. Murphy loves watching Emori sleep during the day (she takes the night shifts). She always props her feet up on the dashboard and makes snarky comments until her eyelids begin to droop and she falls asleep, her hair falling in her face. Murphy doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of watching her sleep. In sleep, she lets her guard down and looks more at peace than she ever does when she’s awake.

When they reach their patch of dirt in the New Mexico desert, they turn off the highway and Emori attaches the tarp to the back of the car. They settle into the old shelter easily, as if they had never left. They spend the first day clearing out the dust and the bugs, then spend the first night tangled up in each other in bed. They venture out to the closest town and buy groceries, then settle into their shelter to lay low for a few weeks.

About a week into their period of rest, a storm breaks out while they’re having a picnic outside. Murphy stands up, ready to head inside, but Emori just starts laughing, tipping her head back to feel the rain on her face. She spins around, the rain adding new freckles to her face, and Murphy thinks that she’s never looked this beautiful.

She starts to sing a song that Murphy thinks he’s heard before, and his heart drops into his shoes when she turns to him with a smile and holds out her hands. He pulls her against his chest and they dance around in circles in the rain as she sings the song. He recognizes it after a minute and begins to sing along softly. She rests her head on his chest and he presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“I love you,” she says into his shirt, and he buries his face in her hair.

“I love you too,” he whispers. She wraps her arms around him and they stand there in the rain, probably catching colds, but not caring because they’re together and that’s all that they’ve ever needed.

They spend the next week holed up in the shelter with colds, but neither of them really care that much.

 

* * *

 

After their three weeks laying low in New Mexico, they begin to head back north. Emori wants to go to Yellowstone, so Murphy agrees and they start off in that direction. It’s just moving into the off-season, so they’ll be able to wander the park without too much obstruction by tourists. They purchase entry passes at the gate and Emori is bouncing with excitement as they drive into the park. They drive along a winding road, past multicolored lakes and endless trees and rivers and Emori excitedly points out the wildlife that she sees, clutching one of the informational brochures that the smiling lady at the front gate had given them. They stop to see a couple of the geysers, then find a spot in the campgrounds to spend the night. Murphy puts the back seat down in the car and Emori puts her head on his heart, listening to the steady beat.

“I think I forgot that there could be this much green in the world,” Emori whispers in the dark. “I was so used to the desert. I love it here. Maybe we should stay in Wyoming instead of going to Spain.”

“If you think this is amazing, just wait until you see the ocean,” Murphy laughs. Emori laughs with him and they fall asleep smiling. They are woken by the sun and drive through the rest of the park. Emori picks a city on the map and they drive towards it until they find a small town that will work well. They check into a motel under fake names and Emori lists off the things that she wants to see before they leave for Spain. Murphy listens to her with what he knows is a dumbstruck smile. Sometimes he can’t believe that she’s really real, that she really loves him.

He’s almost glad his crew threw him out.

They begin to move south again, as Emori suggests going back to Colorado. They stop in a town twenty miles out of Cheyenne and flip a coin when they can’t decide on a motel. Emori crawls into the bed, saying she’s going to go to sleep early. Murphy decides to take a shower while she reads the book that she bought in Utah. She always says that it puts her to sleep. Murphy doesn’t think she’s ever finished it.

The shower water is freezing, but Murphy is just happy to get clean. The cool, refreshing spray reminds him of the rain in the desert and he showers with a dopey smile.

He gets out of the shower to find Emori curled up on her side in bed, staring blankly at the wall. He rubs a towel through his hair to dry it out and smiles at her, sitting down on the bed next to her.

“Did you finally finish that book and hate the ending or something?” he asks jokingly. Emori’s eyes snap to him and she rolls her eyes, reaching up to smooth down the hair that’s sticking up all over the place.

“Just tired,” she says.

“Then go to sleep,” Murphy laughs. Emori rolls her eyes again and says, “Good night, John.” He slides into bed next to her and curls his body around hers, pulling her back against his chest.

“Good night, Emori.”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, they head to the motel bar to get a few drinks. They aren’t planning any robberies for another few days, so they have time to relax and just be themselves at the bar. Murphy orders an Irish coffee and Emori gets a water. She stares at the counter tiredly and Murphy doesn’t think anything of it when she gets up to go to the bathroom and doesn’t come back for several minutes.

“John,” she says from behind him, and Murphy downs the rest of his Irish coffee and gets up. The first thing he notices is the gun in her gloved hands.

Shock goes through his mind first, then fear, and then a desperate sadness that threatens to drown him as he realizes that she is about to betray him.

Emori points the gun at him, tears in her eyes, and the screams echo through the bar as people scramble for cover. Murphy stares at her, his heart cracking apart.

“The police are coming,” she says. “I tipped them off to your location. I made a deal. I get away and they get you.”

“Emori,” Murphy says softly.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Emori says and her voice is trembling like she’s a second away from sobbing.

“You’ll need the keys to the car,” Murphy says. They’re in his jacket, they always are. Emori holds them up and the breath is pulled from his lungs.

“I stole them last night,” she tells him. She glances out the window. “I have to go.”

“Emori,” Murphy repeats, stepping forward. The gun shakes in her hands. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”

Sirens are audible now, growing louder every second the two of them stand there.

“I’m sorry,” Emori says, and a lone tear snakes down her cheek. Murphy chances another step forward and he sees her fingers tighten around the gun. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this, I didn’t want-”

“Please,” he whispers.

“The police!” someone screams. “The police are coming!”

Emori whirls around with wide eyes to look out the window. Murphy takes the moment of distraction as an opportunity to reach for the gun. She sees him and turns back around, already jumping away, her eyes hardening a little -

The gun goes off.

Pain explodes in Murphy’s side and he screams, dropping to his knees. Emori stands over him, the gun still in her shaking hands. She drops it, her hands flying to her mouth. Murphy clutches the bleeding wound and looks up at her. She sobs once and then she’s gone, leaving him there. He falls forward, unable and unwilling to stay upright, and through the window, he can see her get into the car and roar out of the parking lot. Blood is soaking between his fingers and the shattered bits of his heart shift and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t -

 


	2. Part 2 - Bonnie

_This is how it ends._

With Emori sobbing behind the wheel of the car, the soft memory of his hands ghosting over her face, and she’s trying to remember what it was like to feel loved by someone like him, to not be hated, to feel, to feel, to feel -

* * *

 _This is how it begins_.

* * *

Their first robbery is a massive failure. Otan lays in the road and the car swerves to avoid hitting him. The kind-looking man that steps out to help seems harmless, but when Emori appears from the ditch along the side of the road to tell him to put all his valuables in her bag, he pulls a sawed-off shotgun from the inside of his truck. She and Otan flee and spend the next two nights with hungry bellies.

They learn quickly how to properly steal.

Emori is a better actor than her brother, so she becomes the bait instead of him. She’ll make up a sob story and the kind folk will try to help her (the cruel just drive by her prone body) until she puts a knife up and Otan appears and they steal what they can and disappear into the wilds of the desert. It works well enough that the two of them aren’t starving and haven’t been caught yet.

Otan dies on a day like any other, by a man who didn’t take kindly to being robbed at gunpoint. Emori escapes with a bullet in her leg and has to patch herself up. She spends almost a month battling infection with stolen antibiotics and hope. By the time she’s able to properly steal again, she’s been living on convenience-store granola bars and free waters from Starbucks.

So when the nice car runs out of gas in front of their (hers, now, now that she’s alone) usual spot, the only thing she is thinking about is what sort of money this rich asshole probably has.

“Out of the car!” she shouts, pointing her gun at the man in the front seat through the window. He looks over at her and his lips twitch like he’s going to laugh. He looks out at the empty road in front of him, then out the back window at the empty stretch of road behind him. Emori’s stomach growls and she tightens her grip on the gun. “I said get out of the car!”

The man rolls down the window and Emori wants to spit at him. Rich assholes like him are always being so cocky, so sure that she won’t really rob them. Rich assholes like him are the reason Otan is dead -

“Go ahead and shoot!” he calls, and Emori almost steps back in surprise.

_That’s a first._

“I don’t have anything valuable in here.”

She narrows her eyes. She doesn’t believe him. She walks over to the car, making sure to keep the gun aimed at him, just in case he tries anything. She squints at the floor of the car through the window. It’s spotless. It can’t be. There’s no way. He has to have something.

“Open the glove box,” she demands. The man reaches over and pulls it open. There is nothing inside, not even a registration or an owner’s manual, just a small first-aid kit. He opens it at her prompting and there’s nothing inside, just band-aids and antibiotic ointment and the usual first-aid kit crap.

“I told you,” he says, and he sounds so tired, like he’s done this before. “Nothing valuable. And I spent the last of my cash on gas.”

Emori lowers her gun and stares at him. He stares right back, but there’s a deep sadness in his eyes that she feels in her heart. What is he doing here?

“What are you doing out here by yourself with no money and no gas?” she asks. The man shrugs.

“Running. What are you doing out here by yourself with a gun?”

_I didn’t used to be by myself, I had a brother -_

“Surviving.”

He leans back in his seat and seems to think about this answer.

“Surviving,” he murmurs. He looks at her again. “You gonna shoot me?”

This surprises Emori again. He might be the first one that has ever been so casual about having a gun pointed at him. Maybe he has a death wish. She raises one eyebrow to hide her surprise and says, “Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and there’s something about his sad honesty that Emori can’t help but see a reflection in. She pulls down the bandanna around the lower half of her face and sets her arms on the car door, her upper body leaning into the car as she studies the man. On closer inspection, he looks more like a boy, barely older than her, too young to be unsure if he wants to live or not.

He reminds her of herself so much it hurts.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she says, even as Otan’s ghost places a hand on her shoulder and tells her that this is the wrong choice. The boy looks at her and she grins at him. “This road doesn’t go anywhere interesting.” Just to a town full of people who don’t care. “The real fun is north.”

“What’s north?” he asks, clearly trying to pretend he doesn’t care, but Emori sees the spark of curiosity in his eyes.

“I told you already,” she says. “Real fun.”

Maybe he’ll come with her. Maybe he’ll get out of the car and walk along the road until he finds the town. Maybe he’ll become her partner in crime, maybe he won’t die -

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Emori leads him to the house with the nuclear shelter that was likely built in the 80s, back when people feared the Russians and every neighbor who walked their dog in a vaguely suspicious manner. She ignores the growl of her stomach because she’s been hungry before and gives him the shitty whiskey that she stole from a divorced husband moving west to escape his angry wife.

He fits perfectly into Otan’s old chair.

“What’s your name?” she asks. He hands her the bottle.

“John Murphy. Most people just called me Murphy.”

“John.” It fits him, she thinks, looking at him over the rim of the bottle. She smiles at him. “I’m Emori.”

“Emori, that’s pretty.”

She smiles again and he asks her about the shelter and she watches the way he reacts when she tells him that her brother is dead. He knows something about loss. She takes the bottle from him and drinks deeply.

_What are you doing here?_

He tells her about how he used to be a getaway driver and she almost laughs at how perfect it is. A thief and a traitor to boot. They will get along quite well, she thinks.

“I was there when they got Wells,” he says, his eyes full to the brim with that same sadness. She wonders if Wells is dead. “I was there.”

“What happened?”

“He was trying to get away and I hadn’t realized. That’s when they got him.”

_Otan is running towards her, waving his arms and screaming for her to run, when the gunshot rings louder than anything she’s ever heard and the pale desert sand is dyed red and she’s sprinting away, tears choking her as her lungs burn and her world collapses -_

“How long ago was that?” she asks quietly. John tips his head back, staring at the ceiling as his brow creases.

“Two days ago? Three? I’m not sure.”

Emori drinks to get rid of the oppressive ghost standing on her shoulders and shouting at her to not trust John, to get rid of him -

“What’s your deal?” John asks. Emori shrugs.

“I rob people on the road. Steal food, money. Every once in a while I’ll venture into the closest town and rob the convenience store there.”

“We’re a couple of thieves,” John says, and the humor in his voice makes it sound almost musical. He says something else but Emori is watching the light glint off his eyes and wondering how many lies his lips have told. He drinks the last of the shitty whiskey and asks, “Do you care if I stay?”

“Stealing is harder when you’re alone,” she says. _Everything is harder when you’re alone,_ she thinks, but she keeps that to herself.

“So you won’t kick me out?” he asks, and the sharp edge in his voice cuts between her ribs in a way that is painful in how familiar it is.

“No, I won’t,” she says. She holds out her right hand to him, keeping her left tucked under her leg. “Partners?”

Something like hope sparks in his eyes and Emori’s heart does a funny flip in her chest at the sight. She almost jerks her hand back out of fear, but he takes it and her whole body burns.

“Partners.”

 

* * *

 

The first time she has to smear the small animal’s blood on him, she almost cries. He doesn’t seem to think much of it, just nods at the streaks on his clothes and skin and says, “Looks realistic.”

_The desert sand is stained red for a week, until a summer storm carries away the last traces of him -_

“Yeah,” Emori says, unable to look directly at him. “Now, go lay on the side. In the shoulder, so that nobody accidentally runs you over.”

He follows her instructions and Emori crouches in the ditch, between a few large rocks that she and Otan dug up and placed there their first few weeks in the desert. She keeps her eyes on John’s prone body. He is facing her and she marvels at how easily he plays dead. When they hear the car coming down the road, he opens his eyes and winks at her.

The car stops next to him and they hear the driver say, “Oh my god. Sir, are you okay?”

Emori waits for the man to crouch next to John before leaping from the ditch and hitting him across the head with the butt of her gun. The driver collapses from the blow and she kicks him in the head to ensure his unconsciousness. John gets up and looks down at the man, whistling softly.

“That’s brutal,” he says. Emori just stares at the man, regret clawing up in her chest. They used to leave them conscious. She wants to say, _“I wasn’t always a monster_ . _”_

_The man has a gun and the shot shatters everything -_

“Let’s see what he’s got in the car,” she says instead, and they steal the money from the man’s wallet and the food in his backseat. John finds a jacket that he likes and takes it, delighted when it fits. Emori discovers a few CDs in the glove box that she is curious about and takes them. They drag the man to his still-running car and prop him up in the front seat so that he won’t get run over and take their loot back to the shelter. Emori sets herself to the task of sorting through the food and putting away everything they’ve taken.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” John asks, pulling a lighter from his pocket. Emori wrinkles her nose.

“I hate the smell,” she says, turning her back to him. He doesn’t say anything to that and the next morning she sees the box of cigarettes in the trash.

The sight makes her smile for some dumb reason.

She begins to get used to John. He’s funny in a sarcastic way, always making little jokes about the people they steal from. He respects her space and doesn’t ask a lot of questions, not even about the glove on her left hand. When she shows him the scar on her leg from the bullet, he doesn’t say a word. She’s sure that he’s going through withdrawal from giving up his smoking habit, but if it’s bothering him, he doesn’t let on about it.

She thinks she starts to fall in love with him.

She’s sitting at breakfast, eating an apple and reading a trashy romance novel she found under the backseat of the car they robbed the day before, when John says, “I think we can do better.”

“You think that, do you?” she snaps, and he puts his hands up in a surrender-like gesture. Her anger is sudden, born from a fierce protectiveness of the life she and Otan had, and she wonders bitterly how long John has been holding on to this. Maybe since he met her. A rational voice in the back of her head says that it’s been two weeks, and he’s used to fresh air.

“This works,” he says, and for a second her heart skips at the thought that he could be talking about their partnership. “It works really well, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve been gassing up the car for a reason. Eventually, someone’s going to find this place. We’ll have to be long gone by then.”

Deep down, Emori knows he’s right. Deep down, Emori even agrees with him. It’s not safe to stay in one place. She and Otan would steal once or twice a month. They’d get in four months what she and John have stolen in two weeks. That will bring attention to them, and they won’t be safe.

“You said that there’s a town nearby, right?”

“There is,” Emori says, trying to gain a hold over her emotions.

“We’ll start there. Rob our way all along the west. I worked with professional thieves. I know how to do it and I know how to not get caught.”

That is a proposition Emori was not expecting. She studies John, wondering about his past. She’s reciprocated his polite avoidance of personal questions, but at times like this, a part of her demands to know the root of the sadness behind his eyes. As always, he surprises her. Traveling robbers? It doesn’t quite seem like his style, though it would certainly be hers.

It reminds her of Bonnie and Clyde.

“Why do you want to do this?” she asks. He shrugs.

“Because it’s what I’m good at.”

“Okay,” Emori says, turning back to her apple and her book. “We’ll leave this afternoon.”

She takes the blankets from the bed and packs the food in the cooler that they stole. John silently puts everything he’s accumulated over the last two weeks into a duffel bag. Emori picks up her gun, the one that she stole almost three years before, and counts out her bullets. She loads the gun and sets the safety, sticking it in her boot, then tucks her bag of bullets into her pocket. Too soon, everything is ready to go. She stops at the bottom of the stairs. John seems to understand that she needs a moment and she hears the doors swing shut behind him.

The old chair that Otan used to lounge in looks empty without him in it. Emori presses a hand to her mouth and sobs quietly, squeezing her eyes shut. This was her home, this was _their_ home, and now she’s leaving it. She feels like she’s betraying Otan, betraying his memory. She can’t just _leave_ like this, but she’s going to. John is right, they won’t be able to hide there forever, not with how much they’ve been stealing. Sooner or later they will be caught.

She walks over to Otan’s old chair and grips the back of it, her entire body heaving from how hard she’s crying.

“I miss you,” she says. “I wish you were still here.”

She thinks he might have gotten along with John. The three of them could have been unstoppable. A sideshow of freaks and outcasts.

She wipes the tears off her cheeks and goes up to where the car is waiting. If John notices her tears, he chooses not to say anything. Emori is grateful for that. He pulls away from the decrepit house that used to be her home and she reaches into the backseat and picks up her map. She opens it and traces her fingers over the spiderwebs of roads spanning the yellowed map. The town they’re going to isn’t on the map, it’s far too small, but the road they’re on is.

“It’s about ten minutes west,” she tells John, her eyes locked on the small dot on the map that denotes the city that she was born in. She remembers very little of the city, just what Otan told her later, but she always feels drawn to it in a morbidly curious way. Her mother died in that city, giving birth to her. Emori didn’t know that until she was almost twelve, and the night that Otan told her, she’d cried like the world was ending. She sometimes had the insane fantasy of finding her mother’s grave and laying flowers at it the way they did in films.

Before she knows it, they’re driving through the small town that she’s ventured into occasionally to steal from the convenience store. They drive past it and she glances over at John. He’s focused, concentrating on their surroundings with a creased brow. He’s cute when he’s focusing, she thinks. It’s a self-sabotaging thought, as now her heart is doing that funny jumping thing in her chest.

John stops at a convenience store that Emori’s never robbed. She looks over at John and sees him counting out the cash he has tucked in a little brown wallet. So they’re not there to steal.

“What are we getting here?” she asks. John just shrugs and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards like he’s laughing at an old joke that she hasn’t heard.

“Whatever the hell we want,” he says, and the way he says it tells her that he’s said it before, in happier times, surrounded by happier people. She nods and gets out of the car, letting her hair fall around her face. John walks in and begins to peruse the shelves of overpriced snacks. Emori realizes that she doesn’t have to hide her face because they aren’t stealing anything and grins, picking out a few chocolate bars. John smiles when he sees her holding the armful of candy with a grin and adds granola bars and a pack of gummy worms to her pile on the checkout counter.

Emori can’t remember the last time she paid for something at a convenience store. It’s a good feeling.

She wants to stay in the motel across the street from the store as it looks cheap, but John argues that the one across town looks slightly safer and is closer to the highway. When they can’t agree, they flip a coin. Emori watches it settle on the pavement and grins when it lands in her favor. John doesn’t complain and drives across the street to the motel. They get their bags out and walk into the lobby. Emori is not put off by the stained carpets, or the dirty walls.

It’s not the shelter, and the change of scenery is much more refreshing than she expected.

“Single or double?” the greasy woman at the front desk asks, looking John up and down almost hungrily, though her tone is one of utter boredom. Emori doesn’t like her.

“Single,” John says, and Emori has to hide her surprise. He’s never shared a bed with her, but she supposes that it’s less suspicious if they seem like they’re a couple. It’s smart, really.

(her heart does not beat faster at the thought of sharing a bed with him, no it does _not_ )

The woman asks for ID and John gives her one from his wallet. Again, Emori has to hide her surprise, especially when she catches a glimpse of the ID and sees that it is from New York, and reads “Nathan Miller.” John is full of surprises, it seems.

The room is small, with a big bed, a desk, a dresser, a TV, and a bathroom. Emori pretends not to look at the bed and says to John, “I’m going to take a shower,” without looking at him. She’s hiding the flush in her cheeks and quickly shuts herself in the bathroom. She presses her hands to her burning cheeks and tries to get ahold of herself. It’s her first time away from the shelter in a long time. She’s just overwhelmed, that’s all. There’s nothing else going on. She is most certainly not thinking about curling up against John to fall asleep -

Maybe a cold shower will help.

She sings to herself in the shower, scrubbing the desert sand out of her hair and off of her skin. There’s always been a relief for Emori in being clean. She loves the simple pleasure of it, of just feeling like a regular person, even if it only lasts for a few minutes. She carefully scrubs in between the fingers of her left hand with the soap, getting in between the twisted joints that sometimes feel like dirt magnets. When she’s finished with the soap, she just stands under the warm spray (the whole “cold shower” thing got old after about two seconds) and shuts her eyes.

Maybe she should see what happens with John.

She gets out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel, wringing out her hair. She steps out of the bathroom and sees John leaned over the desk, scribbling something on a piece of paper.

“What are you writing?” she asks, softly so that she doesn’t scare him. He turns around and his eyes flick to her left hand for a half-second. She freezes a little, wondering how he’ll react, but his gaze passes right over it and he looks up into her eyes, his expression entirely unchanged.

He is full of surprises.

“A to-do list,” he says. “Clarke always used to write them before heists, so that we were all clear on the plan.”

 _Clarke_. She must be from his old crew. Emori sits on the edge of the bed closest to him and begins braiding her hair to hide her trembling hands.

“Tell me about your old crew,” she says softly. “You never talk about them.”

“There’s not much to say,” John says. Emori just looks at him and her disbelief must show through, because he tips his head back and looks at the ceiling in the way he does when he’s talking about something that hurts. “There were seven of us. The lucky seven, you could say. Clarke and Bellamy and Wells were the leaders, I guess.” _Wells_. Emori wonders why an outcast like John would be so torn apart by losing a leader. “Clarke was the bossy one that made all of the plans and Bellamy was the inspirational one that made everyone rally together and Wells-”

“He was the one that got arrested,” Emori says quietly. Even the way he says Wells’s name is different. With Bellamy and Clarke, there is a lingering bitterness that is probably associated with being thrown out, but with Wells, there is only a deep regret. John shuts his eyes and it takes a moment before he speaks again.

“Raven and Monty were the tech geniuses, they made all of our forged documents and any sort of gadget that we might need.” So that’s where he got the fake IDs in his wallet. A few mysteries were being unraveled. “Jasper was their apprentice; he and Monty liked to make moonshine for after a successful heist.” He laughs a little and Emori is suddenly hungry for more of the sound, for him to laugh properly. “They could cook up just about anything, I swear. And I was just the getaway driver.”

“Just?” Emori asks, watching his expression. It twists momentarily, until he opens his eyes and repeats, “Just.”

He suggests watching a film after that and Emori says nothing as he hunts for the TV remote. She finishes braiding her hair and ties it off with a piece of thick yarn, sitting cross-legged on the bed. John finally finds the remote, flopping down next to her with a triumphant smile. He turns on the TV and a news channel pops up.

“Wells Jaha, after only two and a half weeks, has been sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison tonight. Federal police suspect that he was working with as many as twelve other co-conspirators in the repeated robberies of Ark Industries.”

John slams down on the button on the remote that will switch channels, refusing to look at Emori. She can see the telltale shine of tears in his eyes and reaches for his hand, not sure what makes her need to touch him, comfort him. Her fingers wrap around his palm and she hears a sharp intake of breath from him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. He sits there for a second, still not looking at her, before pulling his hand out of hers and standing up. He pushes aside the curtain and she sees his pale reflection in the window, conflicting emotions grappling for control on his face.

“For what?” he says casually, though the sadness in his eyes says he is feeling anything but casual. Emori decides to make a joke. Maybe he’ll laugh again.

(not that it would matter to her if he did)

“For not shooting you.”

He laughs for real this time and something in Emori’s chest swells at the sound. He turns around and she smiles at him. She sees his Adam’s apple bob and he drops his gaze. They both are frozen in place for a few seconds, processing everything that had just happened, before the cheesy laugh track from the sitcom playing on the TV breaks through the serious mood that has settled over the motel room.

Once night has fallen, they sneak out and steal license plates and John mentions how Raven and Monty used to forge them and Emori tries not to identify with the nostalgia in his voice because she remembers when she and Otan used to steal parts off of cars in parking lots in the town and sell them to an auto shop down the road. She laughs at a joke that John tells about a funny license plate and wonders if this could be her new normal.

She’s tired when they get back to the motel, both from carrying the bag of license plates and from the long and emotionally exhausting day that they’ve had. When John nods approvingly at the license plates spread out on the bed, she gratefully sweeps them into the bag and says, “Good, that means we can go to sleep.”

She looks up at him to see surprise on his face and raises her eyebrows. She jerks her head towards the wall behind which their neighbors are rather loudly fucking.

“Unless you want to do what they’re doing?”

She relishes in the immediate redness that flushes his cheeks and he mumbles something about taking the floor. Emori, now knowing the effect that it will have on him, says, “You don’t have to take the floor. I’ll share.”

He turns an even deeper shade of red and puts his hands over his face as he turns around. She puts on her pajamas and crawls into bed. A minute later, the bedsprings creak as John gets in on the other side. The sound makes Emori flush red, but there is about a half a meter between them. She turns off the lights and shuts her eyes, but she can’t go to sleep.

“Why would you be so surprised about going to sleep?” she asks.

“We never used to sleep before a heist,” John replies. “I guess it’s just a habit.”

_A heist? Who are they going to rob?_

She plays off her surprise as a joke, laughing, “Who are we robbing tomorrow? I thought we were just traveling.”

She can hear his smile when he says, “We can travel and steal at the same time. It’s multitasking.” She snorts into the pillow quietly. “I was thinking we go a few towns over and hit a grocery store. Small towns usually have less security than bigger cities.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Emori says, shifting a little to get more comfortable. She yawns. “Good night, John.”

“Good night.”

 

* * *

 

Emori picks up a pair of round reflective sunglasses and puts them on, grinning at John.

“Do I look like a hippie from the sixties?” she asks. He laughs and the sound warms her from the inside out.

“Yeah, you do.”

She again marvels at the simple pleasure of paying for things instead of having to steal them and leaves the thrift store with a satisfied smile. When they begin driving again, she puts her feet up on the dashboard and she and John sing along to the radio.

It feels like home.

They park behind the store, in a hidden nook that the security cameras don’t reach, and put on their disguises. John gives Emori his jacket and she loves how ridiculously big on her it is. She puts on her sunglasses and a baseball cap and ties a bandanna around the lower half of her face, checking in the side mirror to see if any bits of her face are exposed. John copies her look with his sunglasses and bandanna and they head for the front of the store.

She is afraid for a second, then fires her gun at the ceiling.

“Everybody on the ground!”

She follows John as he takes the bag to the cashiers. The first two put the money in the bag, but the third is a sobbing young girl barely old enough to be a cashier. John sets the bag on the counter and calls, “Hey, B? Back up a little.”

Emori understands that he’s talking to her and smiles at his use of a code name. She pretends for a moment that it’s not a random letter of the alphabet and instead stands for Bonnie.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” John says. He has pulled down his bandanna and is speaking soothingly to the young girl. “What’s your name?”

“Charlotte.”

“Charlotte. Hey, hey. It’s okay. Just open up the cash drawer and put the money in the back. I promise we won’t hurt you.”

He is gentle and kind during a robbery. It’s Emori’s new favorite thing about him.

She wonders if Otan would have been the same way for a second, but quickly remembers that Otan would have opposed robbing grocery stores.

“Let’s go!”

They run out the back of the store and get into the car, waiting until they are far past the city limits to pull off their disguises. Emori is laughing, adrenaline pumping through her body. She grabs the bag from the back and begins counting out the money inside. She laughs at the amount.

“Otan and I never got this much stealing from people on the road.”

John grins and says, “I told you this was a good idea.”

“You were right,” she laughs.

“I usually am,” he brags.

She laughs at him again and he glances over at her with a softness in his eyes that makes her heart flip over in her chest.

They agree that it will be risky to check into a motel and turn off the highway. Emori stops him before they get too far and attaches a tarp to the back of the car that will drag behind and cover the tire tracks. They pick a spot far enough away from the highway and Emori lays down a blanket over the desert rocks. John picks a couple bottles of shitty whiskey and they drink at the same time, toasting their success. Emori lays down and rests her head on John’s leg. His fingers slide into her hair and she almost shuts her eyes at the relaxing sensation. She trusts him, she realizes, and instead of scaring her, it gives her an immeasurable sense of relief.

She trusts him.

He tells her how he met his old crew while braiding parts of her hair and she tries not to cry at the pain that he’s been through. In return, she tells him about how she used to be a scared little foster kid and how she and Otan were always alone. She tells him how he died and he twists the three braids into one.

“That’s where the scar on your leg is from,” he says softly, running his fingers over the top of her head. She shuts her eyes momentarily.

“Yep. What about you? Have you got any battle scars?”

“Plenty,” John says. “There’s one on my shoulder from the time my mom threw a bottle at me.”

Emori sits up and steals his bottle of whiskey and takes a drink and shows him her scars. When he tips up his head to reveal the neat scar on his throat, she reaches up to touch it. The scar stands out from the rest of his skin. It looks like the sort of scar a dead man should have, but he survived it. He survived. She runs her fingers over it, over the reminder of his survival. He inhales sharply and his hand catches her wrist, his eyes full of that sadness again.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice broken. She can’t look away from the reflection of the sunset in his eyes. “I hate people touching them.”

“John,” she whispers, setting her hands on his face. She trails her fingers along his cheekbones. He closes his eyes and a tear hits one of her fingers. “John, look at me.”

He opens his eyes and she brushes away another tear.

“They don’t define you,” she says. When he starts to shake his head, she presses her fingers into his face and says it more firmly. “They don’t. They are a part of you but they don’t define you.”

Kissing John is like being set on fire. She strings her fingers through his hair and his hands are gentle on her jaw. When they end up on the ground, he keeps her off of the rough desert rocks despite how much they must be digging into his back.

She wakes up in his arms and knows that she’s home.

 

* * *

 

They’re in Nevada when they decide to pull their first real heist. Emori uses some of their money to buy a fancy-ish dress for herself and a suit and tie for John. They sneak into a casino. Emori loops her arm through John’s.

“I’ve never been to a place like this,” she says, looking around at the glittering decorations. John leans down and kisses her cheek, murmuring, “You fit right in.”

She swats him away, laughing. She sees him swipe the dice from the pocket of a man with a large scar down the side of his face and presses her fingers into his elbow.

“What are those for?”

He drops them into her hands and she feels how they are weighted.

“Guaranteed win with those,” he says with a grin.

“Risky, isn’t it?” she asks. He shrugs, tucking the dice into his pocket.

“Isn’t everything we do risky?”

“I suppose,” Emori says. John picks a table and they settle down around it, placing a few bets against the other players. John wiggles his eyebrows at her and holds out the dice. She just stares at him for an awkward minute. The other players laugh a little.

“What am I supposed to do?” Emori whispers, confused. John smiles.

“Blow on them.”

“Why?”

“It’s for luck.”

She blows on the dice and he says, “How about a nine?” The table laughs at him, then he tosses the dice and they land on a four and a five. John grins and starts moving money to their side of the table. After a few rolls, they move on. This time, he puts away the loaded dice and gets out a deck of cards that Emori saw him stack and mark earlier. She tucks the money they’ve won into the purse that she brought and says, “John, maybe we shouldn’t risk it.”

“Relax, Emori,” John laughs, kissing her cheek. “I know what I’m doing.”

She trusts that he does and loops her arm through his. They stop at a table of dangerous-looking men playing poker and John offers to deal. Emori stands behind him, her hands on his shoulders, mimicking the other women around the table. They all look like trophy wives and paid arm candy. She smirks. _She’s_ not arm candy, she’s a partner in crime.

The men seem amused by John’s bold nature and invite him to join. Emori watches as he deals the cards, purposefully dealing himself a bad hand. He loses the first two hands, then wins the third. He loses the fourth, then wins the fifth, sixth, and seventh. Emori smiles to herself, squeezing his shoulders every time he gets a good hand and watching as the powerful-looking men around the table get more and more flustered as John starts to take more and more of their money. Finally, when they’ve accumulated around three thousand dollars, the man on the opposite side of the table stands up, red-faced.

“You’ve got a stacked deck!” he says, pointing an accusing finger at John. “Nobody’s that lucky!”

John places one hand on his chest, seeming offended by the idea.

“My good man, I would never!” he cries. “I’m hurt by this accusation. Come on, B, let’s go.”

He and Emori manage to gather up the money before they find themselves sprinting out of the casino, chased by the red-faced man’s friends. Emori flings herself into the driver’s seat of the car, throwing the money at John before revving the engine and roaring out of the casino parking lot. They are laughing by the time they hit the highway.

“I really thought we were going to die back there,” John laughs. Emori snorts, turning off the highway and driving into the little town they’d picked out for their next motel stay.

“We wouldn’t have died,” she says. “Just had the crap beat out of us is all.”

“Oh, because that’s so much better,” John says sardonically. Emori rolls her eyes at him.

They check into the motel and flop on the bed to count out their winnings. Emori laughs at John’s growing smile. He leans over and kisses her, saying, “We make a pretty good team.” Emori grins against his lips and says, “We do.”

 

* * *

 

They’re in Colorado when Emori starts planning for Spain behind John’s back. She uses scraps of paper from the motels they’re staying in and does calculations while he’s in the shower or asleep or just plain not paying attention. She calculates out how much money they will need for one-way tickets, how much it will take to acquire two fake passports, and how much they will need to buy a shitty little car when they’re in Spain. She borrows laptops in the motel bars and researches cities in Spain that she wants to go to when they have the money. She picks a city that she wants them to live in, right along the water.

She even finds an animal shelter in the city and thinks about what would happen if she got John a cat.

When he says that it will be smart to go back to New Mexico for a few weeks, she worries that he will find her scraps of paper with her plans for Spain and takes great pains to hide them. She tucks two in the lining of her jacket, two in the heel of her boot, a few more in the smallest pocket of her jeans, and others in other random places that she doubts John will look in.

She almost cries when she steps back into the shelter and her memories of Otan come rushing back. She presses a hand to her mouth, looking around at the spaces that he used to occupy. John says nothing about her reaction and instead starts cleaning up, sweeping out the bugs and dust. Emori loves him in small moments like this, when he understands what she needs before she even says it. She just plain loves him, she thinks.

That night, when they’re curled up in bed, John lifts her left hand to his mouth and kisses each knuckle before laying it over his heart. Emori presses her ear to the side of his chest and listens to the heartbeat that also thumps under her palm.

 _I love you_ , she wants to say, but she’s afraid of how loudly the words will echo.

“You said you want to go to Yellowstone, right?” John says, his voice bouncing off the stone walls.

“I do,” Emori says. “Otan and I always talked about going there someday, when we had enough money. I used to dream about walking through the endless forests.”

“We’ll go there first, then,” John says decidedly. “Right after we’re done here.”

“Perfect,” Emori laughs, and falls asleep smiling.

They decide to have the picnic outside on a whim, both of them needing the fresh air. They’ve gotten so used to having fresh air during their weeks traveling that staying underground for so long is unfathomable. Emori spreads out the blanket on the desert sand and rests her feet in John’s lap while they both watch the clouds change color from the sunset.

When the rain starts falling, it feels so good that Emori doesn’t want to ever leave it. She tips her head back to feel it on her face, laughing at the cool, cleansing sensation. She begins to sing an old song about the rain to herself, spinning around. She turns to see John standing there, staring at her in absolute awe, and smiles at him, holding out her hands. They fall together and begin dancing in circles. He starts to sing along with her, his voice low but sweet. She shivers, resting her head on his chest.

“I love you,” she finally says, a bubble of warmth expanding in her stomach. His lips press to the top of her head and he says into her hair, “I love you too.”

She shuts her eyes and buries her face in his shirt, her arms wrapped around him, and they’re definitely catching some sort of cold, but she can’t find it in herself to care at all.

_She loves him._

 

* * *

 

Wyoming is green, Emori thinks. It’s really all she can think as John is driving through the park. She keeps looking down at the informational brochure that the nice lady at the gate gave her and then up at the forest around her. The pictures don’t do it justice.

John smiles when she points out the wildlife that he recognizes, and she almost faints with happiness when she sees a buffalo for the first time, but nothing compares to the geysers. They stop at one of the smaller ones first and John slings his arm around her shoulders, squinting at the informational plaque.

“It says that this one doesn’t erupt very often,” he says to her. She frowns.

“That’s a shame,” she says. “I would have liked to see one of them go off.”

They are walking back towards the car when someone shouts, “Oh my god!” Emori turns around and sees a column of water shooting towards the sky. She presses her hands to her mouth, staring as the geyser continues to erupt, water and steam and mist falling all around the visitor’s area. The mist forms rainbows all around the geyser.

“Well,” John says, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I suppose you don’t see that every day.”

Emori practically drags him out of the car when they reach the next geyser.

They pick a spot in the campgrounds to settle in for the night and Emori rests her head on John’s heartbeat, the steady thump soothing her.

“Maybe we should stay in Wyoming instead of going to Spain,” she jokes, thinking about the hidden scraps of paper with her scribbled dreams on them. John laughs, his fingers tracing up and down her spine.

“Just wait until you see the ocean.”

Emori can’t wait to see the ocean with him. It will be another adventure - the Mediterranean, the ocean, everything so long as he is there.

In the morning, after they’ve left the park, Emori picks a random city on the map of Wyoming that they got at the information booth in Yellowstone. They drive towards it until they find a good small town to stop in and pick a motel. Emori immediately flops down on the motel bed and starts listing off the other beautiful places she wants to visit before they leave for Spain. She wants to go to the Badlands, she wants to see the weird mountain with all the old white dudes carved into it, she wants to go to New Orleans and see the bayous, she wants to go the endless plains of the Midwest -

John catches her around the waist halfway through her list and kisses her breathless, murmuring, “I love you,” over and over.

They decide to move south again. Emori wants to go back to Colorado. They made a lot of money there before, so she figures that it will be a good state to revisit. As they continue south, they rob a few grocery stores and one bank, gathering up a decent amount of cash. They end up in a town twenty miles out of Cheyenne.

“We’ll be in Colorado within a week,” John says after they reach the room. “We should probably rest for a few days.”

“You’re right,” Emori says, yawning. “I’m going to bed early.”

“Are you going to read that book you got in Utah?” John asks with a knowing smirk. “The one that you never finish?”

“It always puts me to sleep,” Emori says. She crosses her arms over her chest and sticks out her tongue at him. “You should try it sometime.”

He laughs and presses a soft kiss to her lips before disappearing into the bathroom to take a shower. Emori digs the book out of her bag and curls up on her side of the bed, opening up to the last place she remembers reading.

The phone rings while John is still in the shower. Emori frowns and rolls over in bed, grabbing it off the cradle.

“Hello?”

“I’m with the FBI task force assigned to the two robbers that have been terrorizing the West. We have reason to suspect that they are staying in the motel that you are currently in. Do you have a moment to talk?”

“I’m sorry, wrong number,” Emori says. The man on the other end chuckles darkly.

“You must be the girlfriend,” he says. “Don’t hang up, you’re going to want to hear this.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emori says, her voice trembling slightly. Fear is beginning to creep into her bones and every creak of the floorboards in the hallway is now terrifyingly loud.

“Your boyfriend’s old friends gave us a description of him,” the man says, and the floor falls out from under Emori’s feet. She has to steady her breathing as her brain races ahead at a million miles an hour. She and John could move about as freely as they could because nobody ever saw what they looked like. That was their safety, their invisibility cloak. Nobody knew what the two robbers looked like, just that it was a man and a woman. The risk of being caught was lower, based entirely on if they were dumb enough to let a camera catch them at a vulnerable moment. Nobody knew what they looked like.

“Are you still there?” the man asks, sounding amused.

“What do you want?” Emori whispers.

“Simple. If one of you does not turn yourself in, in the next 48 hours, you will both be placed on shoot-on-sight, starting with your boyfriend.”

Emori closes her eyes as a gunshot rings loud in her mind and her brother collapses to the ground, blood staining the highway and soaking into the desert sand -

“How long do I have?” she asks.

“48 hours. Turn yourself in and he lives to see another day. Or turn him in and you can disappear. Whichever you’d like.”

The line clicks and Emori drops the phone, putting her head in her hands. The shower shuts off behind her and she scrambles to put the phone back in the cradle and curl up on her side of the bed again. She’s staring blankly at the wall, trying to make an impossible decision, when John walks back in, rubbing a towel through his hair. He sits down on the bed next to her and she tries not to flinch.

“Did you finally finish that book and hate the ending or something?” he asks, humor brightening his voice. Emori looks up at him and rolls her eyes at the hair that’s sticking up all over the place. She reached up and smooths it down, hoping that he won’t notice the way her fingers shake.

“I’m just tired,” she lies.

“Then go to sleep,” he laughs. She rolls her eyes again and curls up, saying, “Good night, John.” He climbs into bed next to her and pulls her against his chest, murmuring in her ear, “Good night, Emori.” She tries hard not to cry at how softly he holds her, how his heart thumps against her back, how gently he traces her sides until his breathing slows and he falls asleep. She squeezes her eyes shut, silent tears dripping out onto the pillow, and tries to make the most impossible decision she has ever had to make.

She could turn herself in, but that would be pointless if they know what he looks like. It won’t be long before they catch him again after she gives herself over and if she’s already in custody there is no way he will go down without a fight. They’ll kill him if he fights back. No, she has to turn him in. If she turns him in and runs before the police get there, she’ll get away and he’ll be in jail instead of dead. Maybe she can find his old crew and they can help her break him out -

No, they would never. Not after they gave the police his description. They’re probably all already in jail. She can’t break him out herself. If she does this, she will have to accept that she will never see him again.

She will turn him in to save his life.

 _It makes sense_ , she says to herself. _If they know what he looks like, they’ll never stop hunting him._

She won’t let him die.

She gently wriggles out of John’s arms and tiptoes over to the chair that he has his jacket draped over. She knows instinctively which pocket to reach into to grab the car keys. She’ll need them in the morning. She crawls back into bed and pulls John’s arms around her again. After a moment, he murmurs something in his sleep and tightens his hold on her, burying his face in her hair. She presses her hand to her mouth to contain a sob and tries to commit the feeling of his arms around her to memory.

_“We could go to Spain.”_

She won’t let him die.

He can’t know what she is going to do. He can’t try to follow her when she leaves. She will keep him there until the police arrive and then cut and run at the last possible second. He will go to jail thinking that she betrayed him, but at least he’ll go to jail breathing.

She gets very little sleep that night, and when the morning light finally breaks through the window, it’s like she’s been hit with a hammer.

She can’t wait to do it. It has to be today. The longer she waits, the more she will talk herself out of it and the less time there will be before he’s lying dead in the highway just like Otan -

“Morning,” John says, wrapping his arms around her from behind and pressing a sleepy kiss to the side of her head. “How did you sleep?”

“Good,” Emori lies, turning around in his arms and kissing him for real. “How about you?”

“Great,” he replies with a smile, resting his forehead against hers. “We’re not planning any jobs for a few days; do you want to go down to the bar and have a few drinks?”

Emori laughs.

“It’s eight in the morning, John!”

“Never too early for drinks,” he grins, kissing her again. She laughs at him and pushes him away, saying, “Fine, but you have to get dressed.”

She pretends that it doesn’t hurt and commits to memory what he looks like with morning light illuminating his face.

She won’t let him die.

They go down to the bar and John orders an Irish coffee. Emori knows she will have to drive, so she gets a water and sits at the bar silently, steeling herself for what will follow. Finally, she gets up the nerve and says quietly, “I’m going to the bathroom.” He just nods and sips his coffee. She swipes a cell phone out of some lady’s jacket on the way by and goes up to their room, throwing her things into a bag. She picks up John’s jacket, the one with his wallet in the pocket. He forgot to put it on that morning. She shoves it into her bag and uses the back door of the motel to get the parking lot, shoving her bag into the backseat. She leans against the side of the car, pulling out the phone that she stole. She looks up at the sky, inhaling shakily, and dials 9-1-1.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s a woman here with a gun!” Emori says fearfully, whispering as if she was hiding from someone. “She’s got a gun pointed at one of the guys in the bar, I think she might be that robber that they’ve been talking about on the news!”

“Ma’am, where are you?”

“The Teton Motel, outside of Cheyenne,” Emori says, glancing through the window at John. He’s still sitting at the bar, his back to the parking lot.

“We’re sending officers to your location, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You said you think you saw the female robber, have you seen the man?”

“No,” Emori says, hiccupping to make it sound like she’s crying. “No, it’s just her. Please hurry!”

She hangs up and tips her head back, exhaling slowly. There’s no turning back now.

She slips the stolen phone back into the woman’s purse on her way by and takes the gun out of her waistband. She stands behind John and stares at him, telling herself that she will run when the police get close no matter what he says. He will get caught and he will keep breathing.

“John,” she finally says. He drinks the last of his coffee and stands, turning around to face her with a smile.

The smile drops off his face when he sees the gun.

Something in his eyes shatters when she points the gun at him, but the man’s voice rings in her head and she can’t stop thinking about Otan’s blood staining the highway and she’ll be damned if she loses another person she loves.

“The police are coming,” she says. He can’t try to follow her and he’ll never stay behind willingly, not after everything he’s done to stay out of jail. He has to think she is betraying him. “I made a deal. I get away and they get you.”

“Emori,” he says softly, and it shoves a shard of ice in her heart to see the tears in his eyes. She’s biting back tears of her own, trying to push down the part of her that screams that there has to be another way, but if they know what he looks like it won’t be long before he’s lying dead in the highway, just like Otan -

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she says. She steels herself. She will do this to save him, will push him away to keep him alive.

“You’ll need the keys to the car,” John says, something wild and desperate in his eyes. Emori holds them up and he inhales softly. She sees him realize that he’s not wearing his jacket and tries to keep her voice steady.

“I stole them last night,” she says. She hears the sirens and glances out the window. She needs to leave before they get her too. “I have to go.”

“Emori,” John says, a quiet begging in his voice. Emori bites down so hard on her lip that she tastes blood. The gun rattles as her hands shake and she almost drops the gun, tears forcing their way towards the surface. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, one tear falling from her eye. It is all she will allow herself. She has to go, she has to leave.

_I’m sorry for being in love with you._

_I’m sorry for betraying you._

_I’m sorry for this._

Her grip is loosening on the gun and she doesn’t know what will happen if she drops it, so she tightens her hold.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen like this, I didn’t want-”

“Please,” John whispers raggedly, and it’s all Emori can do not to break down and sob. She didn’t want this. She just wanted him to live. She just wanted to save his life.

“The police!” someone screams. “The police are coming!”

She’s out of time. She whirls around to look out the window, and in the corner of her eye, she sees John reach for the gun. She moves away - she doesn’t know what he’ll do if he gets the gun and if he has a gun they’ll kill him, they won’t hesitate -

The gun goes off.

John lets out a terrible scream, one that tears Emori open from the inside out. He falls to his knees, blood soaking through his shirt. She drops the gun and her hands fly to her mouth. He looks up from the bleeding wound in his side, blue eyes full of tears and confusion and he’s so scared, he’s so scared to die and she wants to stay with him, she knows he’s afraid to die alone -

_“Run!”_

_The gunshot shatters the desert and she looks up to see him still looking at her, brown eyes staring through her and she can only sob as she tries to run like he said -_

She won’t watch him die. She won’t. _She can’t._

She sobs once and runs.

The driver’s seat is too far back and she used to tease John about how she wouldn’t be able to reach the pedals if she sat as far back as he did but now she doesn’t care, now she just has to run as far away as possible from the motel where he’s bleeding out.

She won’t watch him die.

She sobs as she drives and remembers the ghost of his hands tracing her cheeks and tries to remember what it felt like to be loved by him, to feel loved at all, to feel, to feel, to feel -


	3. Part 3 - Barrows

Emori is twenty-three miles away from the motel when she slams on the brakes and turns around.

 

* * *

 

Murphy is barely conscious when they haul him into the ambulance, the memory of Emori’s hands on his face the only thing he can feel.

 

* * *

 

She still has tears drying on her face when she stops at the motel and demands to know where they took him.

 

* * *

 

He loses consciousness with the words “I’m sorry” still ringing in his ears.

 

* * *

 

She drives with the desperate hope that she’s not too late.

 

* * *

 

_ This is how it ends. _

 

* * *

 

Emori storms into the hospital lobby, a gun hidden in her belt and ready to fight her way to John if she has to. She shoves her way to the front desk and slams her hand down in front of a receptionist that’s filing her nails. The woman jumps and looks up at Emori with surprise. 

“I’m looking for a man that was brought here today,” Emori says, proud when her voice doesn’t tremble. The receptionist nods, a hint of fear in her eyes. “He would have been brought in with a bullet wound.”

The receptionist types something into the computer and tells Emori,  “He’s in surgery right now. Are you a relative?”

Emori makes a split-second decision. 

“I’m his wife,” she says. “His name is John Barrow. I’m Elizabeth.”

The receptionist types something into the computer and tells Emori that she’ll let her know the second John is out of surgery. Emori sits with shaking hands for a few minutes before a doctor comes out and says, “Elizabeth Barrow?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Emori says, standing. 

“Mrs. Barrow, we just have a few questions about what happened to your husband. We already asked the people at the motel where he was shot, but we want to see if you know anything. Were you there at the time of the incident?”

“Yes. There was a woman who had a gun. She shot John and ran.”

“Was this at a close range?”

“Less than a meter away. He was trying to talk to her, convince her not to commit the crime.”

The doctor scribbles something on her clipboard. 

“You weren’t at the scene when the paramedics arrived,” the doctor says. “Where did you go?”

“I ran outside for better cell signal to call 911. They came and got John before I got back.”

The doctor hums and writes something else down. 

“I just have a few more questions,” she says. Emori stands there answering the questions as best as she can, then has to repeat them to at least three other people. By the time she’s finished relaying her story to what feels like everyone in the hospital (four motherfucking hours), John is out of surgery and in the ICU. The nurse leads her to his room and she can feel the guilt building up in her chest, ready to burst the second she sees him lying there and she knows that she’ll never forgive herself for this - 

“Here you go, Mrs. Barrow,” the nurse says, stopping in front of a door. “He’s in here. The surgery went very well. Your husband’s a fighter, that’s for sure. The bullet grazed only a few organs and broke an artery, but we’ve got him patched up and he should make a full recovery. He’s not awake yet, but the sedatives should wear off within the next couple of hours.”

“Thank you,” Emori says, her mouth dry. The nurse opens the door for her and she steps into the room. The door snaps shut behind her and all she can do is stare at him. He’s lying there on the sterile white hospital sheets and he’s so pale and peaceful. This never would have happened to him if she had just snuck out of the motel and left like the coward she is. 

“John,” she says, and her voice breaks and she buries her face in her hands and sobs because  _ this is her fault.  _ She sits down next to him and takes his hand and swears that she’ll never leave him again, police and anyone who would stand in their way be damned.

 

* * *

 

Murphy dreams of the night they spent under the stars, drinking bad whiskey and talking about scars. He remembers telling her about how he met his old crew. He remembers her telling him about her first robbery. He remembers kissing her and tasting whiskey on her tongue. 

His heart aches with every memory. 

He vaguely realizes that the memory is twisting away from what really happened when he strips off his shirt and Emori presses the gun to his side. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and pulls the trigger.

He opens his eyes slowly, blinking against the harsh light above him. There’s a steady beep somewhere near his left ear and a small hand is in his, warm fingers wrapped desperately around the fingers that Murphy once placed on Emori’s heart and he is vaguely aware that whoever is holding his hand is holding it oddly. The fingers don’t fit around his quite the way they should. He can’t do much more than stare into the sterile white light that’s shining into his eyes for a couple of minutes. He finally manages to move his eyes to the person sitting to his right.

Emori is asleep, the top of her head the only thing he can see. She’s resting her head on her arms, her left hand sticking out to hold onto his right. Murphy stares at her for a minute, the ache in his stomach catching up to him. She shot him, he thinks. She shot him and now she’s here with him - 

Where is here?

He looks away from Emori, a new ache in his chest that has nothing and everything to do with the one in his midsection. He’s in a hospital room, and that’s all he can figure out. 

“Mr. Barrow,” a surprised voice says, and Murphy looks at the door to see a young nurse standing there, eyes wide. “You’re awake.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the ICU at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center. You’ve been asleep for a few hours. Your wife said that you were shot at a motel. Do you remember anything?”

_ Wife?  _

Murphy’s brain finally kicks into gear. Mr. Barrow is him. Emori must have come to the hospital and lied through her teeth about who they were. He is Mr. Barrow and she is his wife. He takes a small breath in, letting the cover story settle over him like a second skin. It’s just another con. 

“I remember being shot,” he says. He reaches over and gently puts one hand on Emori’s head.  _ Just another con _ . “Honey? Wake up.”

She sits up sleepily after a second, blinking. Her eyes land on him first.

“John,” she breathes, relief evident in the single word. A knot forms in Murphy’s chest. “I thought-”

“I’m okay,” Murphy says.  _ Just another con. _ He looks away from her, at the nurse standing in the doorway. “How long am I going to be here?”

“I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse says, and hurries off. Murphy looks back at Emori and pulls his hand out of hers. Hurt flashes in her eyes, the sort that would normally make Murphy feel guilty, but this time he’s not guilty at all.

“You shot me,” he says to her. “You betrayed me and you shot me and now you’re here at the hospital, holding my hand and pretending to be my wife. Tell me how that makes any fucking sense.”

“John,” Emori says, tears welling up in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to-- the gun just went off and I panicked, and I ran-- I was so scared that I’d--”

“That you’d killed me.”

She just looks at him hopelessly and the knot in his chest dissolves a little because goddammit, he can’t be angry with her. 

“Why did you do it?” he asks.

“I got a call,” she says. “While we were still at the motel. They said they were a part of the FBI task force assigned to us. They knew where we were. They told me that I could either turn you in or we’d both be put on shoot-on-sight.”

“They don’t know what we look like,” Murphy says. Emori lowers her eyes to the hospital sheets.

“Your crew,” she whispers. “They gave a description to the police.”

Murphy’s chest collapses inwards and his hand clenches into a fist. 

“Prison is better than death,” Emori says. “I couldn’t live with myself if you died and I could have done something about it.”

“Mr. Barrow?” The doctor steps into the room and Emori slips her hand back into Murphy’s. He curls his fingers around hers and he sees her relax at the touch. “Good to see you awake. I’m Dr. Jackson.” He nods at Emori. “Mrs. Barrow.”

“Did he spell your name right on the paperwork?” Murphy asks Emori, using an old trick Wells taught him for when he forgot cover stories on-mission.

“Of course,” Dr. Jackson says, seemingly offended by the notion that he could misspell a name. “Elizabeth Barrow, E-L-I-Z-A-”

“Good,” Murphy says. “The last doctor we talked to spelled it with an ‘s’.”

Dr. Jackson laughs a little and Murphy squeezes Emori’s hand.  _ Elizabeth.  _ She’s used that one before. In Colorado, or maybe Nevada. 

“Well, Mr. Barrow, you’re a very lucky man. The bullet made a clean entry and exit, barely nicked two organs, split an artery, and punched a couple nasty holes in your skin, but we’ve managed to patch up all of the damage that was done. You should be out of here within the week.”

_ We don’t have a week. _

Murphy can see that Emori is thinking the same thing. If his crew has given his description to the police, they will find him soon enough.

“Is there any way I could shorten that?” Murphy asks. Dr. Jackson’s eyebrows draw together. 

“A week is standard for injuries like yours. However, since it didn’t do too much damage, depending on how your body reacts to the medicine, your stay can be longer or shorter.”

“We have business to attend to,” Emori explains. “Back home in Virginia.”

“You’re from Virginia?” Dr. Jackson asks. 

“I am,” Emori says before Murphy can open his mouth. “John is from Canada.”

_ Canada? _

“That’s nice,” Dr. Jackson says, frowning at something on his clipboard. He looks up and smiles again. “Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet the two of you. I wish you a speedy recovery, Mr. Barrow.” He tilts his head respectfully at Emori. “Mrs. Barrow.” He leaves, scribbling something on his clipboard.

“Why Canada?” Murphy asks, after Emori gets up and shuts the door. 

“It’ll explain why they can’t find you in the system,” she says matter-of-factly. “Gunshot wounds have to be reported to the police. They won’t find a John Barrow matching your description in their records because he’s from Canada.”

Murphy grins.

“Smart.”

She stares at the bulge of bandages under the clean hospital sheets and Murphy thinks that forgiveness comes easy when it’s her.

“Hey,” he says. “We’re going to figure this out.”

The door opens and a woman with cropped blonde hair and squarish glasses steps into the room. Murphy’s veins freeze over and he can only stare as the woman smiles at the two of them, brushing imaginary dirt off her spotless pantsuit.

“Mr. and Mrs. Barrow,” Clarke says. “My name is Madeline Vernon, I’m with the FBI.” She whips out a pen and clicks it. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about the shooter.”

 

* * *

 

Emori remembers John’s description of Clarke as she studies the woman that has entered the room. The irritated nurse trails after, saying, “Ma’am, he’s just woken up. If you would come back tomorrow, when he’s had more time to recover-”

“Memories are still fresh,” Clarke says dismissively, blue eyes looking Emori up and down. “Besides, Dr. Jackson already cleared me to speak with him.”

The nurse throws up her hands, leaving with a grumble about talking to Dr. Jackson about letting FBI agents harass their patients. Clarke shuts the door.

“Hello, Murphy.”

“You cut your hair,” John says, quiet rage bubbling under his voice. He puts on a smile that’s sharper than the knife Emori keeps up her sleeve. “It looks nice.”

Clarke snorts.

“That’s almost scarier than you yelling at me,” she says. She walks over to where Emori is sitting and Emori scoots away from her. Clarke’s eyebrows raise and she picks up the other chair for visitors, moves it to the other side of the bed, and sits down.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Emori demands. Clarke looks at her with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. 

“Raven put a few bots in police servers,” Clarke says. “Checking for anybody arrested with Murphy’s description. I was in California when we got the message that somebody with Murphy’s description had been admitted to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center with a gunshot wound. Raven watched the report and an hour later it was updated to a Mr. John Barrow, identified by his wife, Elizabeth. Bellamy and I started driving about ten minutes later.”

“Mom and Dad came to pick up the prodigal son,” John spits. “Did they forget they threw him out?”

“We know you didn’t turn in Wells.”

“No fucking shit.”

“We fucked up, blaming you.”

“No fucking shit.”

“We’ve been looking for you for six months now.”

“Well, you found me,” John snaps. “Now leave me alone.”

Clarke raises her eyebrows in a way that Emori thinks is far too condescending.

“You’ve been shot,” Clarke says, as if John doesn’t know. Emori likes her less and less the longer she’s in her presence. “The police are going to do a lot of digging. And your cute little Bonnie and Clyde last name isn’t going to last. They’ll figure out that you’re not who you say you are and after that it won’t be long until they connect you to the Ark robberies.”

John glances at Emori. 

“I told them John was from Canada,” Emori says. “That’ll slow them down.”

“That was smart, but it won’t slow them down long enough,” Clarke says. 

“Yeah, because you gave the police John’s description,” Emori says angrily.

“I’m still on the ‘cute Bonnie and Clyde last name’ thing,” John says.

“We didn’t give Murphy’s description to anyone,” Clarke says. “He knows too much to get caught. He’d tell the police everything about us and we’ve worked too hard to stay out of prison.”

“So that’s why you’re here?” Emori demands. “To make sure he doesn’t get caught?”

“Bonnie and Clyde last name?”

“I’m here to make sure he doesn’t screw us over,” Clarke snaps. 

“Bonnie. And. Clyde.”

“Bonnie Parker and Clyde  _ Barrow _ ,” Clarke says, turning to John impatiently. “Two outlaws during the Dust Bowl whose gang, the  _ Barrow _ gang, rose to be infamous.”

John looks at Emori and she shrugs. She’s never told him about her love of the story of Bonnie and Clyde. She supposes this is as good a time as any for him to find out.

“So you’re here to shut me up,” John says, turning back to Clarke. “Is that it?”

“No,” Clarke says. “I’m here to get you out.”

“And why would you do that?”

“We don’t trust you,” Clarke says. “Hell, we don’t even like you.”

“No, no, feel free to be honest. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

“However,” Clarke continues, ignoring John’s sarcasm, “Wells thinks we should save your sorry ass.”

The change in John is immediate.

“You’ve talked to Wells?”

“John,” Emori says. “This is dangerous. I don’t trust her.”

“You don’t trust anyone,” John says with a smile.  _ Except you, _ she thinks. The smile drops off and he turns back to Clarke. “But Emori’s right. How can I trust you?”

Clarke huffs, annoyed, and pulls out a cell phone. She punches something in and soon the tinny sound of a phone ringing is coming from the tiny speakers. 

“Is Murphy on board?” a man’s voice asks after a minute.

“You’re on speaker, Bellamy,” Clarke sighs. “You should really learn to answer your phone like a normal person so that I have time to tell you that before you go and say stupid things.”

“Okay, I didn’t ask to be privy to a marital spat,” John says. “I asked for an explanation.”

“I need you to put me through to Wells,” Clarke tells the phone. Bellamy mutters something else and then there’s a crackle and Clarke says, “Wells, it’s me.”

“Have you found Murphy yet?”

Emori squeezes John’s hand as his eyes widen and he says, “Wells, what the fuck?”

“Murphy?”

“What the fuck?” John repeats. “I saw them arrest you! You were on the news and shit!”

A laugh from the phone.

“Yeah, I got arrested. Currently in jail. I’ll be fine. Bellamy’s got some friends in here and I’ve been doing good. I heard you got shot.”

“I’ll live,” John says, his cheeks splitting with a grin. “When Clarke showed up I thought she was going to kill me.”

“Yeah, we figured you’d be skittish.” A murmur from Wells’s side of the phone. “Listen, I gotta go. Don’t get arrested.” The phone crackled and Bellamy’s voice said, “That good enough for you, Murphy?”

“What’s the plan?” John asks.

“John!” Emori cries, her head spinning. “You can’t be serious!”

The door opens and Clarke quickly scribbles on the clipboard that’s been sitting in her lap. Dr. Jackson and the nurse that complained about Clarke step inside. 

“Is there anything else you remember about the shooter?” Clarke asks, and Emori shivers at how quickly the con settles over Clarke. Now she knows where John learned his skills.

“No,” John says. Emori stares down at the bed. Clarke nods.

“Miss Vernon,” Dr. Jackson says. “We must ask you to come back tomorrow, when the patient is more rested and no longer in the ICU. We’ll be stepping him down tonight.”

“Of course,” Clarke says, standing and shaking Dr. Jackson’s hand. “I’ll be back tomorrow with more questions. And I’ll need your patient records.”

“Miss Vernon, that’s not-”

“I’ve already spoken with the administrative staff,” Clarke says, cutting off the nurse. “And my higher-ups in DC. They’ve sent the appropriate paperwork for the acquisition of Mr. Barrow’s hospital records and the police report that was filed.”

“What are those for?” the nurse demands, crossing her arms over her chest. Emori admires the suspicious quality the woman has, but dislikes the timing. 

“Evidence for our investigation,” Clarke explains with a half-patient expression. “We have jurisdiction over all cases involving the two robbers that have been terrorizing small towns all around the west over the past six months. I understand that the 9-1-1 call identified the shooter as one of those two. That makes this case a part of our investigation, and therefore under our jurisdiction, so we can acquire any and all police reports, hospital records, surveillance footage, and any other related materials. I expect to have the paperwork in my hands by the morning.” She nods at John and Emori. “Mr. and Mrs. Barrow.” She sweeps out of the room and the nurse scowls at Dr. Jackson.

“Letting the FBI come in here and harass our patients,” she mutters angrily, scribbling aggressively on her clipboard. “I’ll be speaking with the hospital board of directors about this.”

“Let it go, Harper,” Dr. Jackson says tiredly, dragging one hand down the side of his face.

“Don’t ‘Let it go, Harper,’ me!” Harper cries, glaring at him. Emori suppresses a giggle. “I have a job to do and I can’t do it with FBI agents badgering my patients!” She turns to John and smiles sweetly. “I’m sorry about all of this, Mr. Barrow. We’re stepping you down from the ICU in a few hours. I’ll be back then to take you to the general ward.”

“Thank you,” John says. Harper and Dr. Jackson leave, still arguing. Emori shuts the door and returns to her place next to John.

“Clarke will be back tomorrow,” John says. He wiggles a little, getting comfortable against the pillows. “Better get some sleep. I bet Bellamy will be with her and those two are exhausting. You’ll need the energy.”

“I’ll sleep when you’re out of the ICU,” Emori says. John smiles at her.

“Get some rest,” he says. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

 

* * *

 

Emori is asleep when Harper returns to take Murphy to the general ward. Harper wakes her gently, telling her quietly that they are moving Murphy out of the ICU. Emori nods sleepily and follows them to the small room that they bring Murphy to. Harper even gives Emori pillows and a blanket when Emori refuses to leave Murphy’s side. She quickly falls back asleep and Murphy stays awake a little while longer, listening to her breathe. 

If Clarke and the others didn’t give the police Murphy’s description, then who called their motel room and freaked Emori out? Had they been calling every motel in Wyoming until they got lucky? Somebody had to have tipped them off. But who? They were always so careful about hiding their faces from cameras and bystanders and anyone who could possibly identify them.

No, the police must have narrowed down their search area and called every small motel like the ones that Murphy and Emori stayed in until they hit the right one. The police made a lucky guess. But would they guess that the two of them were at the hospital now? Emori shooting him has really turned out in their favor. Nobody would suspect the poor victims of a senseless shooting to be the bad guys. It’s brilliant, really. A brilliant accident. 

He falls asleep somewhere around one in the morning and is woken by Harper saying, “Let him sleep!”

“I’m awake,” he says groggily, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. His gaze lands first on Emori and the tired droop of her eyelids and the two cups of steaming coffee sitting on the table next to her. She offers him a sleepy smile. His gaze lands next on Harper, shooting him an exasperated look over her shoulder. Finally, he sees the two people standing in the doorway. 

Clarke is dressed in a similar pantsuit to the one she was wearing the day before. Her short hair is clipped back and her eyes are boring into Harper, who shows no sign of budging. Bellamy is dressed sharply in a black suit and tie, watching Murphy, or at least, Murphy assumes so. He’s wearing sunglasses, probably to disguise a black eye.

He’s impressed that Harper is holding her ground so well against the two of them. They have an intimidating aura when they’re together. 

Maybe that’s just the memory of Bellamy’s arm around his neck, squeezing the life from him. Maybe they only scare Murphy.

“My patient is not to be harrassed by the FBI again. You’ve woken him up,” Harper snaps, turning back to Bellamy and Clarke. 

“Dr. Jackson-”

“Fuck Dr. Jackson. You will leave my patient alone.”

“Miss McIntyre,” Bellamy says, tiredly, in the tone he used to use when Murphy was being an ass. Murphy heard that tone a lot. “We are simply attempting to continue our investigation. Mr. Barrow is awake now, and we just have a few questions to ask him.”

“And I need the paperwork I requested yesterday,” Clarke cuts in, her arms crossed over her chest. Harper glares at her for a minute before her expression shifts into a sweet smile.

“I’ll accompany you to retrieve that,” Harper chirps, though there is a hint of venom underneath the chipper pitch of her voice. “Mr. Kane, please try not to distress my patient too much.”

“I’ll do my best,” Bellamy says, his lips twitching. Harper marches out of the room with an irritated Clarke trailing behind. Once the door slams behind the two of them, Bellamy takes off his sunglasses (he does have a black eye, and a nasty one at that) and rubs his forehead the way he does when he’s irritated.

Murphy is intimately familiar with the motion. 

“She’s a rather stubborn one,” Emori says, pulling Murphy’s attention towards her. She gestures at one of the coffee cups. “I even had to get your coffee approved before she would let me get you one.”

“I’m guessing it’s too much to hope that it has whiskey in it?” Murphy asks, picking up the cup. Emori’s eyes sparkle with amusement and she says, “Sadly, that was on the list of things that I was not allowed to put in it.”

“If you two are quite finished,” Bellamy says, pinching the bridge of his nose (another habit Murphy is intimately familiar with - it seems that just being in the same room as Murphy has brought Bellamy to his peak irritation mode), “we have a lot to go over and not a lot of time to do it.”

“If you’re that sick of me already, we’re going to have a long few days ahead of us,” Murphy says, sipping his coffee as nonchalantly as possible while his hands shake. “But before we go forwards, I feel that you owe me an apology.”

“An apology?” Bellamy asks, staring at Murphy. “For what, exactly?”

_ Crushing force on his windpipe, and he’ll never get to tell Wells that he’s sorry for his cowardice- _

“You know what,” Murphy says, holding Bellamy’s stare. Regret flashes in Bellamy’s eyes. He always had a softer heart than Clarke.

“I’m sorry I nearly killed you,” he finally says, rather insincerely. Emori snorts into her coffee. Bellamy throws up his hands. “Can we please move on?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Murphy says. “Nice shiner, by the way. Who gave that to you?”

“We’re going to have you transferred to a hospital in Virginia,” Bellamy says, ignoring the question. “Thank you for telling them you lived there, by the way - uh, what’s your name?”

“Emori,” Emori says, taking a long drink from her coffee without breaking eye contact with Bellamy. “It’s almost a pleasure to meet you.”

Bellamy’s eye twitches.

“The hospital thinks you live in Virginia. Since you lost your wallet when you were shot, which includes whatever fake ID you might have used, they can’t quite complete your medical files. We’ll get Monty on the phone, pretending to be your doctor from Virginia, and you’ll be flown out tomorrow. Raven will be flying, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Murphy says. “How do you plan on faking the transfer? Somebody will be expecting us in Virginia.”

“Monty and Raven are faking the transfer papers as we speak,” Bellamy says. “Nobody will be waiting for you at the other end and the doctors here will be none the wiser.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Emori says. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Bellamy says. “You two are the two robbers who have been stealing from everyone across the west over the past six months, aren’t you?”

“That’s us,” Murphy replies. “Are you surprised?”

“Not in the slightest,” Bellamy says. “But the records indicate that the robbers were responsible for the shooting at the motel.”

“Is there a question in there somewhere?”

“Who shot you?” Bellamy asks. “The police couldn’t have, or you would be in handcuffs.”

“I did,” Emori says, taking another drink from her coffee. Bellamy’s eyes snap to her and he can’t seem to hide his surprise. Emori’s lips twitch into the sharp smile that Murphy fell in love with all those months ago. “What, is that not what you expected to hear?”

“When they said that the female robber was the shooter, I thought it had to be a mistake,” Bellamy said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I suppose it makes sense now. Why did you shoot him? I doubt it was part of your plan.”

“If you would allow us time alone with the patient,” Clarke says as she walks through the door, holding a manila folder full of the paperwork she requested. “We have questions.”

“Fine,” Harper says. She turns to Murphy, smiles, and points at the red button on the side of the bed. “If you need me for anything, or if they’re bothering you too much, you just press that, okay?”

“Thank you,” Murphy says, smiling. Harper shoots one last venomous look at Bellamy and Clarke and marches out, shutting the door a little more forcefully than is probably necessary.

“She would get along with Raven,” Clarke says, tossing the file onto Murphy’s bed. “And, speaking of Raven.” She pulls out her phone and dials a number. “Raven? Yeah, I’ve got the physical copies. We’re all good here. Ready for a wipe, say, tonight? Yeah. Thanks. Bye.”

“It was an accident,” Emori says. “The gun went off.” She glances at Murphy and he reads the silent question in her eyes.  _ Should we tell them about the phone call?  _ He barely shakes his head.  _ Not yet. _

“What was an accident?” Clarke asks. 

“She shot Murphy,” Bellamy tells her, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Apparently by accident.”

“Well,” Clarke says after a second, clearly unable to think of anything else. 

“What are we going to do when the real FBI show up and start asking questions?” Murphy asks. 

“We should be long gone by then,” Bellamy says. “Raven’s going to wipe the files they have on you tonight, and we have the physical copies. After that, all they will have to go on is a description from the hospital staff, and even that isn’t enough to open any sort of investigation into you.”

“Won’t the missing medical files raise a few questions?” Emori asks, leaning forward. 

“Raven’s good. She’ll make it look like a system error.”

“And the missing police files?”

“Clerical error.”

“What about all the people who have seen you two parading around and pretending to be FBI?”

“Look,” Clarke says, clearly annoyed by the questions. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve done extractions like this before, Murphy, you know that.”

“Plus, I’m pretty sure Harper will chase the next FBI agent that comes calling out of the hospital with a scalpel,” Bellamy adds, his lips twitching into an amused smirk.

Emori glances at Murphy again.  _ Now?  _ He nods.

“The FBI are already investigating the incident,” she says. “That’s the reason I had a gun pointed at John in the first place. I got a call the night before from a man claiming to be FBI. He said that you gave them a description and that if I didn’t turn one of us in, we would both be placed on the shoot-on-sight list.”

Bellamy and Clarke exchange a look.

“We didn’t tell the police shit, so that has to be a lie,” Clarke says. “Besides, if they really knew what Murphy looked like, they would already be here, arresting you. But if they were really FBI and didn’t know who you were but knew  _ where  _ you were, they would already be here, questioning you. So none of this makes any sense.”

“The FBI should already be here if they were the ones that threatened us at the motel,” Murphy says, leaning forward, then wincing and leaning back. He sees guilt flash in Emori’s eyes. “But if it wasn’t them, then who was it?”

They all sit in a moment of silence at that question, mulling it over.

“It doesn’t matter,” Clarke says. “If it was the FBI that got lucky, then they’ll be here soon. We need to move you now. I’ll call Monty.”

“It would be a weird fucking prank if it wasn’t the FBI,” Murphy mutters. No one laughs. Clarke dials Monty and Emori slips her hand into Murphy’s. He squeezes her fingers and takes another drink of coffee. For a minute, the only sounds in the small hospital room are the quiet murmurs of Clarke on the phone with Monty, Emori singing softly under her breath as she carefully watches both Bellamy and Clarke for any suspicious movements, and the hum and beeps of the hospital machinery. 

“The hospital staff should be getting a call from Dr. Green any minute now,” Clarke finally says, tucking her phone into her pocket. “He’s going to give Raven the go-ahead to wipe the systems the second the transfer is set and approved. Raven will be coming by in a chopper when it’s time. Until then, try not to do anything stupid.”

“Thanks,” Murphy says sarcastically. Clarke nods respectfully to Emori and she and Bellamy swiftly exit. Emori drinks the last of her coffee and throws away the empty cup, settling back in her chair afterwards and taking Murphy’s hand again.

“They seem like lovely people,” she says with a smile. Murphy snorts.

“Yeah, they’re great when they’re not killing you for something you didn’t do.” He slumps a little. “Wells getting caught made them angrier, I guess. They normally have a sense of humor.”

“I thought that the comment about not doing anything stupid was funny.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be. They genuinely think I’m dumb.”

The door opens and Harper walks in, followed by Dr. Jackson. She smiles at Murphy.

“Good news, Mr. Barrow. You’re being transferred to a hospital closer to home, in Virginia. We have your doctor on the phone.”

Dr. Jackson hands Murphy the phone. He lifts it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Murphy, good to hear that you’re actually alive and that I’m not wasting my time on some random idiot with a bullet wound.”

Murphy can’t help but smile at the sound of Monty’s voice.

“Yes, I’m doing quite well.”

“Raven will be by to pick you up in the chopper in thirty minutes. I’m assuming you have a getaway car at the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“Your girlfriend will have to drive that. We’ll be landing at a small airstrip outside the city. I can give her directions and she can meet us there.”

Murphy glances at Emori.

“She’s right here, you can talk to her.”

Emori’s eyebrows shoot up, but she takes the phone from him and listens to Monty explain the plan. She frowns.

“No, that’s not going to work. I’m sure. No.”

She hands the phone back to Murphy. He grins and says, “What’s the verdict?”

“You two are the worst,” Monty mutters. “Clarke will drive your car to the airstrip and the two of you will be together in the chopper.”

“That sounds much better.”

“We’re borrowing one of Ark’s fancy planes, so we can get the car onto it once we get to the airstrip. We’re flying to the safe house in Virginia. Are you clear on the plan?”

“Sounds good, doc. I’ll see you soon.”

“Try not to be too much trouble, Murphy,” Monty sighs. “I’ll see you soon.”

Murphy hands the phone back to Harper. She checks something on her clipboard.

“The transfer chopper will be here in about thirty minutes,” she explains. “Dr. Jackson just needs to sign off on the transfer, then we’ll send you home.”

“Great,” Emori says. She stands up and stretches. “Harper, could you show me the cafeteria? I haven’t eaten in a little while.”

“No problem,” Harper says. “Follow me.”

She leads Emori out. Dr. Jackson picks up the clipboard that Harper left behind and scribbles something on it. He sets it down again and smiles at Murphy.

“Mr. Barrow, I wish you a speedy recovery,” he says warmly. “Thank you for your patience.”

“No problem,” Murphy says. Dr. Jackson leaves and he leans back against the pillows, grinning. Soon they’ll be out of there, and he and Emori will be in the clear. There’s no way the FBI will be able to track them to Virginia. They don’t have enough money for Spain yet, but they can figure something out. 

He’ll have to start learning Spanish. Maybe Raven can teach them.

“Mr. Barrow?” 

He looks up and his chest freezes over. Two men are standing in the doorway, dressed in black suits and holding out FBI badges. He forces what he hopes is a confused smile.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“We’re from the FBI task force that’s been investigating the two robbers that have been terrorizing the West over the last few months. We just have a few questions for you about the shooter.”

 

* * *

 

“Try the scrambled eggs,” Harper says, pointing at the dish. “They’re really the only breakfast food that we serve that doesn’t suck.”

Emori laughs and piles her plate with the fluffy eggs. They smell amazing. 

“Can John have any of these?” she asks, a little teasingly. Harper rolls her eyes.

“Of course he can, if he wants some. He’s lucky that bullet didn’t puncture his stomach, or he wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything at all for a while.”

“He wouldn’t shut up about that if that were the case,” Emori says, forcing a little laugh. She had missed his stomach by seven centimeters. That had very nearly been the case.

Something on Harper’s belt beeps and she checks it.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Barrow, I have a patient to attend to. I wish you and your husband luck in his recovery. Save travels!”

“Thanks,” Emori says, watching her leave. An odd feeling settles in the pit of her stomach. She almost feels bad about lying to Harper about everything. She shakes it off quickly. If they told the truth, John would be handcuffed to his hospital bed and she would be sitting in a jail cell. Lying to Harper is necessary. 

She pays for the food and makes her way back to the hospital room, thinking about the safe house that Monty mentioned. If all of John’s crew stayed there, how big is it? More importantly, how long will it be before she and John will be able to get back to their business?

She is still mulling over her questions when she reaches John’s hospital room. She pushes the door open, saying, “John, I got extra eggs if you want some-” 

She freezes, staring at the two men that are sitting next to John’s bed. He smiles thinly at her.

“Hey, Lizzy. These men are here to talk about the shooter.”

She looks at him, then back at the men. 

“Is that so?” she finally says.

“Yes, and I was just about to tell them  _ again _ that we already had two agents harass us and don’t need any more pestering by the FBI,” he says pointedly, glaring at the two FBI agents. They exchange an exasperated look. One smiles at Emori.

“Mrs. Barrow, as we said to your husband, the people you spoke with earlier were most likely local law enforcement.”

Emori tries not to flinch as she recognizes the man’s voice. He’s the one that called the motel. She carefully pitches her voice upwards when she speaks next.

“Are you implying that my husband is confused?” she says, narrowing her eyes at the two men. She sets down the tray of eggs and crosses her arms over her chest. “Because I am not on pain medication and I can guarantee that the two we spoke to were FBI. Now, if that is an error on the part of the FBI, then I would ask that you deal with it before I complain about harassment.”

The FBI agent exchange another exasperated look.

“Mrs. Barrow, the only people that the FBI has sent out are the two of us. Whoever it was that you spoke to, they were not FBI.”

“I’m calling the nurse,” Emori says, pushing the little red button that will summon Harper to their rescue. “This is ridiculous. She can show you the records of their visit. We have already recounted the incident at the motel to the two FBI agents that came earlier. We are not speaking to anyone else about this traumatic event. My husband is being transferred to a hospital closer to our home in less than half an hour. Maybe after you sort out whatever idiocy caused this mistake, you can see about leaving us alone to be transferred home in  _ peace _ .”

She can see John grinning out of the corner of her eye. The FBI agents look stunned. 

“I know my rights,” Emori says. “We aren’t speaking to you. Get out.”

Harper appears in the doorway less than a minute later, while the FBI agents are still seated, a perfect picture of complete and total rage. John smirks and Harper begins to shriek, demanding that the FBI agents get their asses out of her patient’s room before she has hospital security throw them out. She practically chases them out of the room, sending them to reception to obtain the records of Bellamy and Clarke’s visit. She returns a few minutes later with a gurney and a few other nurses.

“Mr. Barrow, it’s time,” she says. “I’m so sorry about all the trouble with the FBI. The chopper is waiting on the roof for you and your wife.”

John makes a painful sound when they transfer him onto the gurney and Emori tries not to flinch. He gives her a small smile once he’s settled, clearly trying to reassure her.

“Can’t even feel it,” he says in a strained voice. Harper snorts but doesn’t comment.

The walk up to the hospital’s helipad feels unbearably long. Emori has to repress the urge to look over her shoulder for the two FBI agents, half-expecting to see them sprinting down the hallway any second, on their way to arrest them. Nobody comes.

Emori has never seen a helicopter up close before, so she lets her gaze rake slowly over the sleek white machine. The pilot, a young woman with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, steps out.

“It should be a short flight,” she says. “The plane is already waiting at the airstrip to take him to Virginia.”

“Excellent,” John says. “I miss home.” 

The hospital staff load him into the helicopter and say their goodbyes, then Emori, John, and the pilot are left alone on the helipad. The pilot holds out her hand to Emori.

“I’m Raven,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”

“Emori,” Emori says. “Here are the keys to the car. Clarke should know what it looks like.”

“It’s that blue one from Philadelphia,” John says from inside the helicopter. “Never got around to stealing a different one.”

“Nice,” Raven says. 

“We live in that car, John,” Emori points out.

“Only sometimes!”

“How is Clarke going to get the keys?” Emori asks, ignoring John. Raven’s lips twitch into a smile. She turns and walks to the edge of the roof, peers over, and drops the keys. Emori and John let out a matching cry. Raven squints at the ground.

“She got them,” she says, turning back to Emori. “She’s going to meet us at the airstrip, and then we’ll be on our way to the safe house in Virginia.”

“You guys haven’t changed a bit,” John says, shaking his head. Raven just grins and climbs into the helicopter, settling down at the controls. Emori climbs into the back, next to John, and slides her hand into his. 

“We’re going to be safe,” she says. “And I’m sorry again for shooting you.”

“Don’t sweat it,” John says. “It adds another cool scar to my collection. Matches the one you have.”

“Wow!” Raven shouts, over the sounds of the helicopter starting up. “Bellamy was right! You guys are sickening!”

 

* * *

 

Clarke looks judgey when she climbs out of Murphy and Emori’s car, but Murphy thinks she always looks judgey, so maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the car. 

“The amount of shit in that car that would get you arrested in just about any state is astounding,” she says to Murphy, dropping the keys on the bed next to him. Nope, she’s being judgey about the car. “It’s a miracle you two haven’t been caught.”

“We live in it, remember,” Murphy says. “I’m sure there’s plenty of shit in the safe house in Virginia that would get all of us arrested.”

“Fair point,” Clarke says. “Raven! Takeoff in ten minutes!”

“What’s the safe house in Virginia like?” Emori asks, pushing Murphy’s gurney towards the side of the plane according to Bellamy’s instructions. He shrugs.

“Not sure. Never had the privilege of staying there.”

“It’s in the middle of the forest, on a river,” Bellamy says. “Lots of space, multiple bedrooms, full kitchen-”

“Excellent, I’ve missed cooking,” Murphy says. Emori stares at him.

“You can cook?”

“Of course I can,” Murphy says. “When we’re not living in motels off of food from the only grocery store in town that we  _ haven’t _ robbed, I’d say I’m even a  _ good _ cook.”

Bellamy snorts, but manages to turn it into an impressive hacking cough. He and Emori strap down the gurney and Emori takes the seat next to him, once again slipping her hand into his. Bellamy heads towards the cockpit and the loud hiss of the cargo bay doors closing cut off what Emori was about to say. Murphy waits for the plane to take off before asking her to repeat it.

“How do you think Spain is going to fit into all this?” she asks. Bellamy and Clarke are strapped into the seats across the plane, on the other side of the door, and are politely pretending that they aren’t listening. Murphy decides to ignore them.

“I’m not sure,” he admits. “But we’ll figure something out. We always do.”

“First you get better,” she says. “Then Spain.”

“Then Spain,” he agrees. 

The landing is a little bumpy, which is less than comfortable with the stitches in Murphy’s side, but it’s over quickly. Clarke says something about Monty coming with a van for Murphy and Bellamy takes the keys to the car and drives off. Raven and Clarke stand at the bottom of the ramp, talking quietly, until the van pulls up. 

“You’ll like Monty,” Murphy says to Emori, who has a deer-in-headlights look in her eyes at the prospect of meeting more new people. “He’s nice, I promise.”

“Murphy!” Jasper shouts, climbing out of the passenger side door with a grin. “Murphy, you asshole cockroach! I owe Bellamy money now, I was sure you were dead!”

“Good to see you too, Jasper,” Murphy retorts. “It’s not my fault you bet against me.”

“I guess not.” Jasper gives a funny little bow to Emori. “Nice to meet you, madam.”

“Are you high?” Murphy asks, amused.

“No,” Jasper says, like a liar. “I’ll have you know that I’m very low.” He chuckles. “That rhymes.”

“This is why I wouldn’t let him drive,” Monty says, getting out the driver’s side. He smiles at Emori. “You must be Emori. I’m Monty, it’s nice to meet you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about all of you,” Emori says, her eyes darting between them. “It’s nice to finally put faces to the names.”

“Nice to meet the girl who kept Murphy alive for six months so that Jasper could lose that bet,” Monty says. Emori’s lips twitch into a smile.

“If we’re all done with that, I think Raven ripped a couple of my stitches during that landing,” Murphy says loudly. Monty snorts and helps Emori to push the gurney along towards the van. They slide him into the backseat and Emori slips her hand into his again.

“What do you think those FBI agents are going to do?” she says quietly. “Once they realize you’re gone, they’ll be suspicious. And one of them was the one that called me at the motel.”

“We’ll improvise,” Murphy says, even as a thrill of fear runs up his spine. “That’s what we always do. We’re pretty good at it at this point. We’ll figure it out, I promise. And now that we’ve got the big brains of Clarke and Monty and Raven around, we’ll do even better improvising.”

“I have a plan for if the FBI tries to track you,” Monty says from the front seat.

“Of course you do.”

“They’re not likely to suspect that you are one of the robbers as you’re the victim of the shooting. That definitely worked out in your favor, and the fact that they didn’t immediately arrest you at the hospital indicates that they don’t actually know what either of you look like. The threat at the motel does, however, indicate that they know that Murphy had friends before the two of you started your crime spree. I had Wells reach out to a couple friends in the federal prison he’s in and we’ve set up a couple of gang members based out of Cheyenne to take the fall. We got a couple people with about the same height and builds of the two of you. Wells assured us that they wouldn’t talk, and will probably die in custody of the police from a rival gang that’s been arrested nearby.” He doesn’t sound too happy about that part. “Nobody will suspect a thing.”

“Sounds great,” Murphy says. “That’s a pretty clean getaway.”

“We’ve even set it up so that the FBI agent who called you will be the one to make the arrests. He’ll stop digging and you guys will be in the clear.”

“Perfect,” Emori says, relieved.

“Not super perfect,” Murphy says, turning his head to look at her. “Once ‘we’ get arrested, we can’t keep going the way we have been. How are we going to get to Spain?”

Emori bites her lip, thinking over the problem.

“First, you get better,” she finally says. “Then Spain.”

“What’s in Spain?” Jasper asks, craning his neck to look at them upside-down. “Ha, you guys are upside-down.”

“Nothing,” Murphy says. He wants to keep their plans for Spain between the two of them for as long as possible. The absolute last thing he wants is for the old crew to crash his and Emori’s party in Spain. “Nothing interesting in Spain.”

“Sounds like there’s something interesting in Spain.” Jasper gasps. “Are you guys married? Are you going honeymooning in Spain?”

“Leave them alone, Jasper,” Monty says, exasperated. “This is why I don’t let you around new people when you’re high.”

“Murphy’s not new people.”

“His girlfriend is, and you’re going to make her think we’re a bunch of weirdos.”

“John told me a lot about you,” Emori says, smiling. “I already know you’re a bunch of weirdos.”

Monty groans and Jasper laughs. Murphy peers out the window and sees that the van is winding through a dense forest, lush green trees arching over the roadway.

“Sort of reminds me of Yellowstone,” Emori says, watching the scenery go by. 

“You guys have been to Yellowstone?” Monty asks incredulously. 

“We didn’t rob grocery stores 24/7,” Murphy says. “We took vacations.”

“We robbed half the grocery stores in Wyoming after Yellowstone,” Emori reminds him.

“Yeah.  _ After _ Yellowstone.”

“What was it like?” Jasper asks. 

“Beautiful,” Emori replies, her eyes fixed on the forest outside. “Absolutely beautiful.”

They reach the safe house fifteen minutes later, after Jasper has asked a series of questions with varying relevance to anything Murphy and Emori have ever done. Monty gives up on trying to stop Jasper and just drives with an air of exasperated resignation.

The safe house is a large wooden cabin-looking structure with a river flowing on the east side of it. The garage that Monty pulls into already holds Murphy and Emori’s car, as well as two others.

“Is this one of Wells’s old places?” Murphy asks. 

“No, we had to ditch all of those after he was arrested,” Monty says. “This is one of Clarke’s.”

“Yeah, so try not to break anything,” Clarke shouts from the doorway to the house. Emori snorts and pushes Murphy’s gurney out of the van. Monty directs them to one of the bedrooms in the house. Murphy can’t find it in himself to admire the building, the exhaustion of the trip beginning to catch up with him.

“Clarke had us set it up for you beforehand,” Monty says. A second later, the queen herself strolls into the room with Bellamy. Bellamy, Monty, and Emori lift Murphy into the bed at Clarke’s direction and she begins to attach him to the medical equipment that’s set up all around.

“You should get some rest,” Clarke says. “I’m sure you’re tired from the trip. We can show Emori around while you sleep.”

“No, I’m fine,” Murphy says, panic sparking in his chest. Leave Emori alone with Clarke and the others? Definitely a bad idea. “Besides, I want to see the house too.”

“You need rest,” Clarke says firmly. “You lost a lot of blood when you were shot, and you’re still replenishing it.”

“Really, I’m okay,” Murphy insists, struggling to sit up in bed. Emori puts her left hand on his chest and pushes him down. Clarke, Bellamy, and Monty all track the movement with their eyes, staring at the twisted fingers of Emori’s left hand.

“Clarke is right,” Emori says softly, and he can see in her eyes that their notice of her hand hasn’t escaped her. “You need rest. I’ll be okay.”

“Take a gun,” Murphy says, squinting at Bellamy over Emori’s shoulder. “Some of them are a little jumpy.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes and Murphy realizes that his eyelids are growing heavy. He glares at Clarke accusingly.

“Did you put sedatives in my IV?” he demands. She just shrugs. He sighs. “I guess I’m not surprised. You sneaky bastards are always pulling the wool over my eyes. It’s just not fair.”

Emori smooths the hair off his forehead and kisses it softly.

“Get some rest,” she whispers. “I’ll take a gun.”

 

* * *

 

The house was beautiful, with wooden floors and warm lighting. It was an enormous, sprawling compound whose grounds covered almost twenty square kilometers. Emori felt like she could wander the entire compound for a week and still not see the entire thing. Monty decided to take charge of showing her around the house, which she is grateful for. Of all the people John told her about, Monty and Jasper were the ones she is least suspicious of. Raven, Bellamy, and Clarke outright scare her a little, but Monty and Jasper are kind. 

“There’s a pool in the basement,” Monty is saying, gesturing towards the stairs. “Upstairs is the master bedroom, which is where Clarke and Bellamy stay. Jasper and I share the north bedroom and Raven’s in the east. You and Murphy are in the west bedroom. The south bedroom is empty at the moment. We’re hoping to save that one for…” He hesitates. “For Wells.”

“John told me about him,” Emori says. “I’m very sorry that he was caught.”

“Yeah, we figured out who turned him in about a week after Murphy disappeared. It was his own father, who figured out that he had been using his status as the CEO’s son to help us dig up dirt on the company. The second we realized that Murphy wasn’t the one to turn Wells in, we started looking for him. But he dropped off the grid.”

“He was in an underground bunker for about two weeks,” Emori says, peering out one of the windows at the river outside. “After that, we were moving around every few days.”

“Underground bunker?” Monty asks, curious. 

“A hideout in the desert,” Emori replies. “We went back for a few weeks a little while ago as well. It’s very secluded.”

“Sounds nice,” Monty says. “Here’s the kitchen Murphy’s so eager to try out. Lots of counter space and some really nice appliances.”

Emori spots a jug sitting on the counter and her lips twitch up into a smile.

“Moonshine?” she asks, nodding at the jug. Monty laughs.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“John told me.”

“Figures,” Monty says. “Yeah, Jasper and I made some for when we got him out of that hospital and to this compound. We figured we would wait for him to be awake first, though.”

“He’ll appreciate that,” Emori says. Monty shows her the rest of the house. The living room is enormous, with comfortable couches and a stuffed deer head on the wall that Emori thinks is more than a little creepy. The TV is hidden in a cabinet with blankets for nights when the crew wants to go out stargazing or for movie nights. Emori likes the idea of stargazing, remembering Yellowstone and nights spent lying on their backs in the desert, pointing out constellations and making them up. The rest of the house is equally impressive, with a computer room that Raven is working in, a small library, and a fitness room.

“How did you and Murphy meet?” Monty finally asks, as they’re walking back towards John’s room. 

“I tried to rob him,” she replies, pushing the door open. Monty doesn’t seem to know what to say to that and makes a little “hmm.” John is still sleeping peacefully, silent among the beeping machines and flashing lights. Emori takes a seat next to him, the gun tucked in the waistband of her jeans pressing against her spine. 

“How much longer will it be?” she asks Monty. He shrugs.

“For him do be done with all the machines? Probably another week. For him to be fully recovered? I’d give it a month and a half. But Clarke’s the med school one, you should really ask her.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks,” Emori says. Monty nods and shuts the door on his way out. Emori slips her hand into John’s and squeezes gently.

“Spain isn’t too far away,” she says softly. “We’ll get there soon.”

Monty’s predictions are close to accurate. It takes John six days before Clarke lets him off the machines to wander the house. She reminds him every ten minutes not to rip his stitches and he rolls her eyes at her and shoots back some quip about how he won’t. Emori helps him walk around the house, when he’s leaning on her heavily with one hand pressed to his stomach. He manages to irritate all of the house’s occupants by the first week that he’s out of bed, an achievement that he is immensely proud of. Emori figures he’s just bored out of his mind.

“When can we leave?” he asks, after three weeks of the two of them being cooped up in the house. They’re in the kitchen and he’s making dinner. “Not that this isn’t a nice place, Clarke, because it is, but Emori and I kind of had a thing that we would like to get back to.”

“Spain?” Clarke asks. Emori and John both freeze, looking at each other and then at Clarke.

“What do you mean?” Emori asks.

“You guys mentioned it a few times when you first got here,” Bellamy says, leaning against the counter next to Clarke. “That’s what you’re so eager to get back to, right? Whatever ‘Spain’ means.”

“What does it mean?” Clarke asks curiously.

“It means none of your damn business,” John snaps, turning to the stove. Emori just looks down at the counter, tracing over the grain of the wood with her fingers. In the three weeks that they’ve been living at the house, she’s come to like the members of John’s old crew, even trust a couple of them, but she agrees with John’s decision to not tell them what Spain means to them.

“Is it actually Spain?” Monty asks, 

“It’s a code word for something,” Jasper says, wandering past John and grabbing a glass for water. “Murphy’s definitely the type to give stuff code names. It’s not the actual country.”

“It means mind your own damn business,” John repeats, though this time with slightly less bite. 

“Emori,” Jasper says, turning to her. She crosses her arms over her chest.

“No,” she says simply. “I’m not going to tell you what Spain means.”

“Fine,” Raven says. “But we are going to find out at some point.”

“So you say,” John mutters. 

“John,” Emori says. He seems to recognize her tone and his shoulders relax a little. 

The others don’t ask about Spain again, but they also don’t tell either of them when they’re going to get to leave the house.

Slowly, Emori starts to become friends with the other people in the house. John falls easily back into his old friendships, but she has to learn how to interact with them. It’s only a little easier than the expects.

She’s in the kitchen, making small talk with Monty while Jasper makes smoothies for all three of them. She finds it easiest to talk to Monty and Jasper, as well as Raven, when she emerges from her computer room. Bellamy and Clarke are nice enough, but they’re too intense to talk to sometimes.

“Mom and Dad are fighting again,” John laughs, as if trying to prove her point, entering the kitchen and taking a bite of the apple in his hand. He slings an arm over Emori’s shoulders and presses a kiss to the side of her head. “Gotta have an excuse for all that make-up sex, I guess.”

“Gross,” Jasper mutters, starting up the blender. John points at him with the apple.

“As if you don’t know it happens.”

“You’re one to talk, Murphy,” Monty says, taking a sip of his tea. “You and Emori aren’t exactly discreet.”

“Leave me and Emori out of this,” John retorts. Emori laughs and gives him a proper kiss.

“He’s not wrong, John,” she says, amused. Monty claps, pointing at them.

“She admitted it! Pay up, Jasper!”

“Goddammit, Emori,” Jasper mutters, fishing a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “You couldn’t have pretended that all that noise was Bellamy and Clarke for just a little while longer?”

“If it meant you would win a bet, then of course not,” Emori laughs. John grins, kissing her cheek. Jasper pretends to barf into the sink.

That moment is one of few that isn’t so bad.

They’ve been there almost two months. Emori is nearly going out of her mind with cabin fever. She and John go out to stargaze almost every night just to stave off the mind-numbing boredom. Clarke and Bellamy are dodgy every time either of them asks about how much longer it will be. John has made a full recovery by then. Finally, Clarke calls all of them into the living room.

“Please tell me this is the part where you say we can leave now,” John says, settling onto the couch with an arm around Emori’s shoulders. Clarke says nothing to that, just flips on the TV and fiddles with it until it displays a picture of a young man with a kind smile. Clarke turns to face everyone.

“We’re going to get Wells out of prison,” she says simply, and the entire room explodes into chaos. Emori stares at the picture. This must be the famed Wells. He has kind eyes, she thinks.

“Hold up,” John says. “You got me out of that hospital and we’ve rescued Bellamy from like six different police stations, but Wells is in  _ federal prison _ . That’s impossible, even for us.”

“Ye of little faith,” Monty says. “We have a plan.”

“We had a plan the night he was arrested, too.”

“This time we’re going legit,” Clarke says. “Lawyers, legal advice, the whole shebang. Wells pled not guilty at the trial and his appeal has been processing for eight months now. The appeal was finally taken by the courts and they’re going to hear the case in exactly a week. I need to be there, obviously, because I’m a prominent figure in Ark.”

“The princess,” John snorts. “Going to save her prince.”

“The rest of you,” Clarke continues, as if John hasn’t spoken, “will be in the audience. Raven has already faked the papers you’re going to need to get in. Obviously you will be in disguise -” 

“Obviously.”

“-and I’ve prepared cover stories for all of you already. Emori, you and Murphy will be there.”

“What are we doing at the trial?” John asks.

“Moral support,” Bellamy says. “Clarke is a witness, the rest of us are there to support Wells. He sure as hell needs it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Emori says. “How do you know it will work? Have you contacted the lawyers on both sides?”

“We’ve got a man on the inside,” Clarke says. “Nate’s the prosecutor.”

“Perfect,” John says, leaning backwards on the couch. “We’ve got the trial in the bag, in that case.”

“Wait, back up,” Emori says. All eyes turn to her. “Who the hell is Nate?”

 

* * *

 

Miller adjusts his tie and shoots a look in Clarke’s direction. Murphy grins from the audience, watching as Miller confers with the two other idiots that are serving on the prosecution. 

“That’s Nathan Miller,” he whispers to Emori. “We know him from Arkadia; he went to law school in DC after he graduated. Clarke kept in touch, figuring we would need him from time to time. He’s an absolutely brilliant lawyer.”

“I’m confused,” Emori whispers back. “If he’s so good, why isn’t he on our side?”

“He’s going to fumble the trial,” Murphy says, watching as Miller nods at his colleagues and steps up to the witness stand to cross-examine Clarke. “Purposely fuck it up so that Wells gets off. I guess Clarke thought that was a smarter play than trying to win against whatever case the state would bring.”

“That is a smarter play,” Emori says, her eyes attached to Miller’s back. 

Wells discreetly turns towards the prosecution, scanning the audience out the corner of his eyes. Murphy grins and sees Wells barely smile in response. He turns to see Raven sitting near the front, in the ridiculous large glasses that Clarke put her in. Wells sees her next and makes a small hand motion, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it. Raven visibly relaxes.

The trial passes the way that Clarke predicted, and by the end of the day, Wells is proclaimed a free man. Murphy grins the whole way back to the house, Jasper and Monty singing in the backseat of the car and Emori laughing at them in the front seat. There will be plenty of moonshine to spare back at the house.

It feels like old times, but better. 

It takes another week before Wells arrives at the house. After being released, he had a few public statements to make. In one, he said he was going to be spending some time with his friends, to get over the eight months in prison. That would sufficiently explain his disappearance while he spent time with the old crew. 

Murphy couldn’t wait for Wells to meet Emori. 

“Now that Wells is out of prison, when are we going to get to leave?” she asks, the day that Wells is supposed to come to the house. Murphy’s euphoria for Wells’s arrival is popped like a bubble.

“Spain,” he says softly. Emori sets her hands on his face.

“We promised each other we would find a way to get there,” she says. “Now that you’re better, and Wells is free, they have no reason to need us here.”

“They hardly needed us here while Wells was still in prison,” he says. “But you’re right. We’re leaving after we see Wells.”

“He must have insisted on seeing you after he was released,” Emori says, biting her lip. She stands on her toes and kisses the corner of Murphy’s mouth. “You’re important to him, like he’s important to you.”

“Wells!” they hear Raven shout joyously. Murphy grins down at Emori and she grins back.

“Sounds like he’s here,” he says. They head for the front hallway and find Wells on the ground, having been knocked over by Raven in her excitement to see him. Murphy coughs politely and Wells looks up from Raven to see him standing there. He grins, lifting Raven to her feet when he stands.

“Last I saw you, you were getting shoved into a cop car,” Murphy says, sticking his hands in his pockets to hide the way they shake. He’s still nervous that Wells will be angry with him. Wells laughs.

“Last I saw  _ you _ , you were driving away. Last I heard of you, you had a bullet hole in your side.”

Murphy laughs and Wells pulls him into a hug. 

“It’s good to see you,” Wells says. “Glad that Bellamy and Clarke didn’t kill you back then.”

“Yeah, me too,” Murphy says. He steps back and laces his fingers with Emori’s. “This is Emori.”

“I’ve heard about you,” Wells says with a kind smile. He holds his hand out for Emori to shake. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Emori says. “John told me a lot about you.”

“She calls you John,” Wells says, glancing at Murphy. “Last person to call you that was Ontari, and you threw her out a window.”

Murphy shrugs and Emori snorts. Murphy told her the story of his bitchy ex-girlfriend Ontari on one of the nights that they spent in a cheap motel in Colorado, and showed her the scar on his lower back from one of Ontari’s infamous rages. 

Murphy threw Ontari out a window during one of her rages. She’d gone at him with the same knife that left the scar on his back, but this time, she’d been aiming at his throat.

Emori kissed the scar that Ontari left and promised that she would never hurt him.

“If John tried to throw me out a window, I would definitely take him down with me,” Emori says, and Wells laughs. Murphy grins, glad that Wells is back, completely himself.

Two hours later, they’re sitting at the kitchen table, drinking Monty’s moonshine and laughing about the shenanigans of the past eight months.

“Murphy and Emori were Bonnie and Clyde-ing it up in the west,” Jasper says. “Robbing grocery stores and a couple of banks.”

“And a casino or two while we were in Nevada,” Emori says, sipping her moonshine.

“What? You never told me that!” Jasper cries. “Dude, that’s so cool!”

Wells laughs.

“I hate to bring this up now,” Murphy says, leaning forward and staring down Clarke and Bellamy, “but Emori and I have been asking to leave for two months now. When are we going to get to?”

“Wells wanted to see you,” Clarke replies, taking a drink of her moonshine. “Now that he’s here, you’re free to go and take care of whatever ‘Spain’ is. Good luck.”

“Wait, what’s Spain?” Wells asks, looking between Murphy and Emori. Emori glances at Murphy and he considers their options. He finally decides that they might as well explain themselves.

“We’ve been stealing money to go to Spain,” he says. The other people around the table immediately perk up, paying close attention. “We’re not far off from how much we need, I think.”

“You’ve definitely stolen enough to get there,” Raven says, tilting her head to the side. “You stole enough to get there in the first two months.”

“We’re not just getting there,” Emori jumps in. “We’re going to stay there. We’ve been saving for a house, or an apartment, a car, papers, and money to spend once we’re there.”

“You’ve been Bonnie and Clyde-ing to move to Spain?” Monty asks incredulously. 

“Yup,” Murphy says. “We’re pretty close to the amount we need, so if you would just let us leave so that we can continue with our business and get the hell out of here, that would be nice.”

“Murphy,” Bellamy says. “We haven’t taken down Ark yet. Don’t you want to see this through?”

“I’d rather live on a nice Spanish coast,” Murphy snaps. 

“Your quest for Spain got you a bullet in the gut,” Raven says. “Who’s to say you aren’t going to get another one?”

“Me,” Emori says. “I’m the one that shot him. I’m not going to do it again.”

“Murphy,” Clarke says. “You two are free to go. But when we take down Ark, you’ll have enough to go to Spain and never have to work another day in your life. And you’ll never have to worry about Ark’s thugs again.”

“Ark’s thugs haven’t tried to kill me in months.”

“And they never will if we take down Ark.”

Emori looks at him and Murphy thinks over the options. He and Emori are supposed to be dead. If they go back to their old MO, the cops will know that the people they arrested weren’t the real perpetrators and will go back to hunting them. His old crew can provide actual safety, and still get them the money they need.

“Sounds good to me,” he says. Emori nods, staring into her moonshine. “But once Ark’s destroyed, we’re fucking off to Spain and none of you are following us.”

“You need to learn Spanish to fuck off to Spain,” Raven says. 

“You do enough fucking off without throwing Spain into the mix,” Jasper says.

“Glad to have you back,” Wells says.

“I need some aspirin,” Bellamy says, getting up and going to one of the cabinets. Emori snorts into her moonshine and Murphy grins at her.

“We’re going to Spain,” he says quietly. “Once Ark goes down, we’re going to Spain.”

She turns to him and smiles, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.

“It sounds perfect,” she says. 

That night, after everyone has gone to bed, Emori pulls Murphy out of bed and leads him down to the garage.

“I have something to show you,” she says, popping open the glove box. She reaches in and slides a small stack of papers out from a small hole in the lining of the compartment. Murphy’s eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. She slides to the floor of the garage and he sits next to her. She shows him the papers. “I started on this while we were still in Colorado. It was the night you told me about Ontari. I started making plans for Spain.”

Murphy takes the papers from her, looking at her careful calculations and notes on apartments, houses, and the city that she picked out. He finds one scrap that has information about an animal shelter and the word “cat?” circled at the bottom.

“You did all this?” he whispers.

“Yeah, I figured it was about time I tell you, since we’re so close-”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into a breathless kiss, laughing. 

“I love you so much,” he says, and she grins, pushing him down and kissing him back. The garage floor is cold against his back, but he doesn’t care.

It’s agreed that they’re going to move everyone to a different safe house. Clarke and Bellamy are going to California with Monty and Jasper while Wells and Raven are going with Emori and Murphy to the safe house of their choice.

Emori climbs into the front seat and Wells complains from the back that he’s been demoted, but Murphy can’t find it in himself to care when Emori is grinning at him like that, her eyes lit up and her feet on the dashboard. She’s so damn beautiful and he’s so damn lucky to have her.

“Where to?” he asks. She pretends to think for a second.

“New Mexico,” she says, grinning. He almost laughs.  _ The bunker _ . “I miss the desert.”

“New Mexico it is,” Murphy replies, putting the car in gear. Behind him, Raven makes a retching sound and Wells says, “Tone it down, Bonnie and Clyde.”

Murphy and Emori don’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally finished this part!! i've been waiting to give them their happy ending for some time now and the show is being disappointing in regards to my dumb kids so i made this even more of a happy ending than i was originally planning!!


End file.
